


and at once i knew, i was not magnificent

by herecomesthepun



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, F/M, Letters, Slow Burn, a lot of space talk considering i have -100 knowledge on space, percabeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 52,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26050453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herecomesthepun/pseuds/herecomesthepun
Summary: At that moment, her eyes fall upon a slip of paper tucked at the very back of her locker, underneath the ugly magnet Piper had brought back for her from the Bahamas. She frowns, reaches in, and prises it free, unfolding it.In blocky handwriting, it says:Hey! I’m part of the Argo cast and I’m borrowing your locker for this season, hope that’s okay! You have a lot of textbooks, you’re probably pretty smart. I think they were moved to the reception for the time being. What in God’s name would make you want to take advanced Math?That’s how it starts.or, in which Annabeth spends her life on the outside, until one day she gets a note in her locker.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 48
Kudos: 400





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from holocene by bon iver

Piper’s text comes in just after midnight.

Annabeth is awake to see it flick onto her lock screen: waits, watches as the time changes from 00:03 to 00:04, and then her screen goes black. She doesn’t touch it, just leans her head against her window and looks down at her book.

The words are getting harder and harder to read, recently.

*

“Predictions,” Thalia demands in lieu of a greeting, the next morning.

Annabeth squints at her. Thalia has a strange habit of opening conversations with non-sequiturs like this: at this point, she should be used to it by now, and she is, but it’s still not something she can handle this early when she hasn’t finished her coffee yet. “Hello to you, too,” she says. “Yes, this is a new jacket, glad you noticed.”

“It’s an ugly jacket,” Thalia pronounces. Annabeth is only mildly hurt. “I need your thoughts.”

“On what? The extinction of the red panda? Because I think it’s inevitable.”

“Your brain is so _weird_ ,” Thalia says, which Annabeth finds incredibly rich coming from the girl currently wearing two different shoes. “Not about the red panda. The new season of Argo.”

“Oh!” Annabeth’s tired brain stutters over Piper’s text from last night. She thinks she vaguely remembers it being something about that. “Right, yeah! Shoot, when does the first episode come out again?”

Thalia waves her off. “Not for a while. They’re starting filming next week. That’s also something we need to arrange, by the way, I spent all of the first season trying to catch Piper in her silly cheerleading costume but she Houdini’d her way out of it every time. We need to plan an ambush so we have photographic evidence.”

Annabeth frowns. As a friend, she had tried to watch the first episode of Argo as soon as it aired, but seeing Piper not as Piper but someone else had been so uncomfortable she’d profusely apologised to her and not watched a single episode further. Thalia, meanwhile, approaches friendship with the same attitude Annabeth can only assume one would approach a street brawl, and insists on pushing through every last episode. Granted, Thalia approaches most things in this way – bullish, well-meaning, probably stoned out of her mind – but still, Annabeth would think that by watching the entirety of the first season she would already have enough fodder of Piper in a cheerleading costume without having to stage an ambush on her.

She says as much, and Thalia rolls her eyes. “That is not the same thing.”

“It’s not?”

“No, because that’s not Piper, that’s a character. I want to see Piper as Piper in a cheerleading costume. That’s like seeing you go to sleep at a sensible time.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “Funny.”

“I see that you’re not denying it,” Thalia says primly. “However, I will let you have it because it’s early and I know you are closest to homicide in the morning, and we have much more pressing matters at hand.”

Annabeth is privately relieved for a change in topic. “It’s telling that your ‘pressing matters’ involve Piper in a cheerleading costume,” she says instead.

Thankfully, Thalia remains oblivious. “As opposed to what? What could possibly be more important than the humiliation of our dearest friend?”

“World hunger? The ACT? The fact we have an essay due first period?”

“We do?” Thalia says. Annabeth goggles at her. “Whatever, I’ll sort something out, I’ve got several aunts I haven’t killed off yet. Anyway, stop distracting me! We need to try and arrange something with Piper. Thank how funny it would be.”

Annabeth has long since learnt that trying to pry Thalia away from something like this would take pliers the size of the Empire State. At this point it’s just easier to indulge her. “We’ll try something,” she says. “Hopefully not get yelled at for trespassing on set.”

“They’re filming in our school. I think they can forgive us if we happen to get lost and happen to conveniently stumble into a classroom where they’re filming Piper in cheer uniform.”

Annabeth raises an eyebrow. “We, as seniors.”

“Totally plausible!” Thalia defends, but she deflates. “I see how that can be a contingency. We might have to try and lure her out of set in the costume. We’ll reconvene later. For now, I want to know your predictions for season 2.”

“I didn’t watch season 1,” Annabeth says. “I don’t know enough to start predicting. Why, did Piper let something slip?”

Mutinously, Thalia says, “No. She is like a vault.”

Annabeth is reasonably impressed. Piper is the worst at keeping secrets, especially from them. And Thalia’s persistence is akin to something of a battering ram. The producers must have threatened her life for her to be so uncharacteristically tight-lipped.

“Well, hopefully she’s in it more,” Annabeth says. “Might increase her paycheck and then she can stop being so stingey and buy us food whenever we go out.”

“I have a feeling she will be,” Thalia says. “I’m sensing a coming-out arc. Because her character’s gay.” As though Annabeth was unsure of what she was coming out of.

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “You think everyone’s gay.”

“Yeah, because gays make the world go around,” Thalia says, and gestures towards herself like she isn’t the physical embodiment of natural disaster. The other day she had proceeded in cutting a significant portion of her finger off during Home Ec and bled all over Annabeth’s chicken pot pie. And it was a good chicken pot pie, as well. Annabeth definitely isn’t still mad about that. “Besides, the sexual chemistry between her and that Reyna girl? I’m just saying.”

“I think you’re projecting,” Annabeth says.

Thalia points a fork at her. “I am furthering a cause.”

“To what, get in Reyna’s pants by proxy of Piper?”

Annabeth has been Thalia’s friend long enough to know that the only reason she doesn’t blush all the way to her hairline is because she is wickedly good at maintaining a poker face. Still:

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Annabeth says, and Thalia says darkly, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you” but she stabs at her grapes with a remarkable vivacity that is only too telling.

At that moment, the woman of the hour herself slides into the seat across from them, her bag slipping off her shoulder. Annabeth has always admired Piper’s ability to look drop dead gorgeous while wearing an outfit that wouldn’t look out of place on a homeless man. It’s really amped up these past few months, though. Annabeth thinks she’s trying to take a stand against the producers telling her that she’s not allowed to cut her own hair anymore.

“Hey, guys!” she says, dimpling at them.

Thalia whirls on her, not unlike a very passionate bat. “Tell me you and Reyna get together,” she demands.

Piper frowns. “I thought I told you about Hot Bookstore Boy.”

“Not in real life, dummy! On the show.”

Piper’s face eases in acknowledgment. “Oh! Well, you know I can’t tell you that.”

“Not even your best friends?”

Piper raises an eyebrow. “If any information got out they would absolutely blame me.”

“Yes, because you’re a notorious gossip,” Annabeth says. “It really says more about you then it does anything else,” and Piper gives her an evil look.

“Come _on_ ,” Thalia wheedles. “Who are we going to tell? Annabeth has no friends.”

Annabeth raises her eyebrows. “Neither do you.”

“Yes, but it’s voluntary. You’re with us out of necessity.”

“Speaks _volumes_ ,” Annabeth mutters mutinously.

“ _No_ , Thalia,” Piper says. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

Thalia sighs, but not disappointedly. For all Piper’s affinity for gossip, she’s been rather fantastically good at keeping hush-hush on the details of the show. Annabeth honestly can’t say it’s easy: Piper is hounded almost every day in school about it. They’ve taken to eating lunch in the science block just to avoid the constant harassment Piper walking into the canteen brings upon them. It’s like being attacked by a pack of vultures. Annabeth’s surprised Piper hasn’t decided to screw it all and start being home-schooled.

Still, it’s not for lack of trying. Thalia leans across the table, and takes Piper’s hand. “Just think how much it would mean to me,” she says, her voice saccharine and cloying, “a young gay, to see other young gays on television. You must know that we are starved for queer representation.”

“Don’t pretend like this is in the pursuit of equality,” Annabeth says. “I can smell your ulterior motives from a mile off.”

The act drops immediately, and Thalia sits up straight, her hand sliding out of Piper’s. “So what if I think Reyna is fit? Seeing Piper make out with her in HD is the closest I’m ever going to get.”

It’s probably a testament of their friendship that Piper seems strangely touched by that. Annabeth would be the fattest form of hypocrite if she called it weird, though, only because she has definitely thought about what attractive celebrities she would quite like Piper to make out with onscreen, if not for her sake then just to get an unbiased kissing review. Piper takes Thalia’s hand again. “That’s so cute!” she says. “I should introduce you two.”

Thalia looks like she’s just short-circuited. “Uh.”

“You’ve broken her,” Annabeth says.

Piper looks confused. “What? It’s not like she’s unattainable. She’s a friend. It would be so easy to introduce the two of you.”

“You can’t tempt me like this,” Thalia says. She sounds a little like a dying hyena.

“It’s not temptation when I plan to follow through with it,” Piper says, which sounds strangely threatening. Annabeth apparently has a thing for people who approach friendship with a vigour that would not be out of place in a shoot-out. “I was talking to Chiron, he’s the director, and he mentioned that he’d like to throw a wrap party when we finish filming season two. I can bring you guys along!”

“To clarify,” Annabeth says, when Thalia does not, “Reyna will be there?”

“Reyna will be there,” Piper promises.

“Huh,” Thalia says, which seems to be the only thing she is capable of articulating.

Annabeth turns to Piper. “What about Hot Bookstore Boy? Wouldn’t you want to invite him?”

Piper blushes. “He doesn’t know about me, yet. I kind of want to keep the whole moderate-celebrity thing on the down-low.”

That seems to be enough to bring Thalia out of her daze. “He doesn’t know who you are?” she says in disbelief. “What? Does he not have an Internet connection? That sounds sort of suspicious.”

“I mean, it’s not that surprising, it’s just a small web show.”

“ _We_ watch it.”

“Yeah, because it’s filmed in our school, and you like to see if you made it into any of the establishing shots.”

“I don’t,” Annabeth interjects.

Thalia ignores her and just scoffs. “He’s probably a sociopath,” she says. “I’d be careful, he probably wants your skin for curtains.”

Piper frowns. “I think that’s a compliment.”

Thalia neither confirms nor denies, instead just takes a sip of Annabeth’s coffee. Annabeth scowls at her half-heartedly.

Piper turns to her. “By the way, Beth, did you see my message last night?”

“You texted me?” Annabeth digs around in her back, produces it, shows Piper the text notification on the front screen. “Sorry, must have missed it. Was it important?” She reads it. “ _On my way home from season 2 table read. I think I accidentally kicked a raccoon._ Wow, clearly this was top priority.”

“You kicked a raccoon?” Thalia says to Piper. “Doesn’t that go against your whole vegetarian animals-have-souls drivel?”

“I hope you are not suggesting that they don’t,” Piper says sternly, and Thalia wisely pretends to look shocked. This is a lecture they’ve both heard far too many times. “Besides, whatever it was, it went after my shoes. Vegetarian or not, I’m not letting some creature chew up my new sneakers.”

Thalia considers this.

“Why do keep texting me so late, anyway?” Annabeth says. “You know I’m gonna be asleep.”

“Yeah,” Thalia adds, “where are _my_ late-night texts?”

“Because at midnight your, like, psychic third eye opens,” Piper says. “I am never emotionally prepared to deal with that.”

Annabeth has to agree. They’ve had to install a rule that prohibits Thalia from consuming any jay or alcohol after one am, otherwise she gets strangely philosophical. The last time it happened she read Annabeth’s palm in freaky accurate detail and then had rattled off at least twenty digits of pi. Annabeth hadn’t even realised Thalia knew what pi was.

“That’s fair,” Thalia concedes. “I’ll forgive you if you can tell me anything from the table read.”

“Nice try,” Piper says. She lets out a yawn, knuckles her eyes. Her nails are all painted different colours. “I feel like I need to sleep for three years.”

“What time did you get back last night?”

“One. It was only meant to be a quick table read but then we all got chatting so we ended up running over. You’d think them casting actual teenagers would mean they’d be aware that school nights are a thing. Whatever.” She lets out another yawn. “I just need to crash over the weekend so I’m ready for next week.”

Annabeth sips her coffee. She can taste the bitter note of Thalia’s vampy lipstick against the rim. “What’s next week?”

“We’re starting filming.” Piper pulls a face. “Yay.”

“Back in the cheerleader costume for you then,” Thalia says, entirely conspicuously.

Piper sighs. “Joy.” At that moment, the bell rings, signifying first period, and Piper groans, resting her forehead against the table. Annabeth sympathetically strokes her hair. “Bury me.”

“Give it an hour,” Annabeth says, and stands up, chucking her coffee into the trashcan. There was still a bit left but Thalia’s backwash could probably evaporate oceans. “Good luck, Pipes.” To Thalia: “You coming?”

“I’m coming,” Thalia says, and hauls herself out of her chair, following her to the doors. “You need to help me construct an excuse for old Rodgers. I have six aunts left who I haven’t killed off, which name do you think sounds like it has the highest possibility of a freak heart attack?”

*

Dinner tonight is beans on toast. It’s the third time this week.

Annabeth doesn’t mention it, just chokes it down, prays that Bobby and Matthew won’t say anything either. Frederick at least looks a little apologetic as Athena pushes it around her plate distastefully, holding her fork like it’s a live wire.

“Sorry,” he says, a little awkwardly, as they all watch her take her first bite. By the face she pulls, also probably her last. “We weren’t really expecting company.”

“I can see that,” she says coolly. She pushes her plate away, folds her hands in front of her.

The ensuing silence is very loud. Annabeth keeps her eyes on her own plate.

Athena is the first to break. “Annabeth,” she says. Her nails are painted the same colour as her blazer. “How’s school?”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you keeping up with your studies?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good,” Athena says. “It’ll reflect well on your college applications.”

Annabeth wishes she could be literally anywhere else. “Yeah.” She looks down at her plate, hopes this thread of conversation will be dropped. Her bread is becoming soggy.

Unfortunately, Athena doesn’t seem to notice. “Have you started on them?”

“On my applications?” Athena nods. “Uh, not yet.”

She raises an eyebrow, mild. “You need to stay on top of things if you want to get into a good school.” Chiding. Like Annabeth doesn’t know.

“It’s only the beginning of the year.”

She ignores this. “What schools are you thinking of?”

“Do we need to do this now, Athena?” Frederick says. “It’s dinner time.”

“This,” Athena says, “is not dinner.”

Annabeth has a hangnail on her left hand, her index finger. She presses the ridge of her thumbnail into it, hard, bites her tongue at the pain.

Athena turns to her. “Annabeth?”

“I don’t know yet,” Annabeth says. “Harvard. Cornell. UCLA, maybe.”

“UCLA isn’t Ivy League.”

Harder. She feels something pool around her nail. “I know that,” she says.

“I thought we talked about you attending an Ivy League school.”

_Like you._ “It’s still a good school.”

Athena watches her for a long moment. Annabeth doesn’t meet her eyes, stares at her plate: picks one of her hands out of her lap, curls into a fist around her fork. Her toast has gone cold. She also hates beans. She wants to leave.

Even Athena can’t do much when she’s up against a passive player, because finally she sighs, exasperated, and stands up.

“I’ll order something in,” she says. “Chinese?”

Bobby and Matthew perk right up. “Aw, yes!” Bobby cheers.

“I want dumplings!” Matthew says.

Frederick looks down at his plate, a little ashamed. He’s the only one who’s eaten everything.

Athena turns to Annabeth.

She’s done here. “Not hungry,” she says. “I’m going to my room.”

Athena’s eyes narrow. “Don’t be immature.”

“I’ve got homework,” Annabeth says coldly. “Need to stay on top of my work, don’t I?”

She doesn’t ever let her voice get that acerbic around her mom, not anymore. Athena looks a little struck, though it’s only betrayed by a brief flicker in her eyes.

“Fine,” she says. “Go.”

Annabeth doesn’t need to be told twice. She picks up her plate in mechanical hands, empties it in the bin, loads it in the dishwasher, and is up the stairs before Athena can say anything more. She pauses on the landing, far enough down that she knows she’s out of sight, and then finally lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. It’s shaky.

She looks down at her hands, still curled into fists. They unfurl. In the dim light from the bathroom, the door crooked open a little, she sees her fingers covered in blood.

The winter has darkened her room when she enters, even though it can’t be later than six or seven. She has to flick on the light, watches as her room floods with colour. Her alarm clock by her bed reads 6:56; she stares at it, chewing her lip, considering. From downstairs she can hear the excited chatter of her brothers as they relay their takeout orders. The sky outside is beginning to bruise.

Mind made up, she grabs her sneakers, slides her arms into her sweater, and slips out of her window.

*

Piper is lying in on her bed scrolling through her laptop when Annabeth slides through her bedroom window. She doesn’t even glance up when she comes in, just offers a “Hey,” without looking away from her screen.

Annabeth toes off her shoes, leaves them up against the wall, and pads over to the bed. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to learn my lines,” Piper says. She points at her screen. “What does that mean?”

Annabeth glances at it. “Ostensibly? Uh, like, apparently, or something.”

Piper nods. “M’changing that,” she mutters, half to herself, as she pulls out her phone and sends a text. “What teenager says ostensibly?”

Annabeth flops on the bed next to her. “I said it yesterday.”

“Yeah, but you’re not exactly the benchmark for normal teenager lingo, Bethie. You’d be more use in a survey in the vocabulary of forty-year-olds.”

“I’m not the one who just said _lingo_ ,” Annabeth says half-heartedly, but Piper ignores her. Annabeth just rolls on her back next to her and holds her phone above her face, flicking through her texts. There’s not much, aside from Thalia’s round of Battleships. She clicks it absently, watches as Thalia completely misses all her boats, then has her own go. She thinks, then aims for a square along the outside. Success. Thalia is so predictable.

For a few hours, she and Piper simply exist in silence, the only noise being the occasional tap of Piper’s keyboard or a faint murmur as she reads one of her lines under her breath. This sort of quiet coexistence is what Annabeth cherishes most about their relationship, she thinks: both of them softening in the smudgy light of her room, surrounded by scented candles and open, leaking jars of nail polish. She’s always sought comfort here, with Piper: it’s a small area of her local universe where she feels safe enough to breathe.

She doesn’t know long they’re sat there for, watching as the shadows cast by the candles gradually dip lower and lower on her walls. All she does know is that when Piper closes her laptop the sky is pitch black outside, and two of the candles have completely burnt down.

Annabeth glances at her. “Is everything okay?”

“I can’t look at that any longer,” Piper says, “I’ll go insane.” She wriggles up next to her, presses her temple against Annabeth’s shoulder, and watches her screen. Still Battleships, with Thalia: different round, though, Annabeth won the last one. They both watch as Thalia’s next go loads in, drops a bomb in an empty square. Annabeth’s turn. She hums a little, thinking where to land her bomb; Piper reaches up, points to the top corner. “There.”

“Yeah?”

“She always puts a ship there.”

Annabeth does. Predictably, a ship. Barely seconds later, Thalia texts her: HOW TF DO U KEEP DOING THAT!!! BITCH!!!

“Like clockwork,” says Piper.

“Loser,” Annabeth says. She sends back a simple heart, then switches off her phone, drops it against her chest. For a few moments, she and Piper lie in silence.

Then, Piper shifts. “Are you staying the night?” Her eyes are wide and amber in the candlelight.

“If it’s okay.”

Piper’s face softens. “Of course. Anytime.” A beat. “You know that, don’t you?”

And Annabeth does. Piper’s window has been unlocked for a very, very long time. “Yeah,” she says. “I do.”

Piper picks up her hand that’s still laying on top of her phone on her chest, cradles it between both her own. Annabeth feels paper-thin. In the light from the candles, the blood crusted around her thumbnail looks black.

“I need to brush my teeth,” Piper says. “I’ll get plasters.”

“Okay,” Annabeth says, quietly.

Piper rolls off the bed, and patters towards the bathroom. Annabeth listens to her footsteps trail off, waits until she hears the tap switch on, before she lets a breath. She folds an arm over her eyes, presses them shut so hard she can see white static against the back of her eyelids, and thinks of infinity.

*

Monday dawns bright and early. Annabeth watches as dawn breaks, counts how long it takes for the sun to rise (thirteen minutes, two minutes slower than Sunday), ignores Piper’s customary night text until she’s on the train on the way into school. This time it’s a selfie, captioned: _we filmed ALL NIGHT i am EXHAUSTED i need a COFFEE_.

She shows Thalia when she arrives, who is in the middle of rolling a blunt in plain sight of all the teachers. “She’s wearing the cheer costume,” Thalia says, who apparently has a radar for this sort of thing. “And so it begins.”

“You’re doing that now?” Annabeth says, of the blunt.

“They wouldn’t dare narc on me,” Thalia says. To emphasise, she narrows her eyes at one of the teachers carefully watching her, and he quickly turns away. “See?”

Annabeth is a little impressed. “Huh.”

She can’t stay and chat long, she has to find one of her science teachers to hand in a paper she’d written the night before, and by the time she’s tracked him down, there are only a few minutes until the first bell goes. She checks her phone, sees a newer text from Piper, _Thalia said you had to hand in a paper, see u at lunch?,_ so she sends her a thumbs-up in response, and then heads to her locker to get her books for first period.

But, to her surprise, when she opens her locker, she finds it completely empty.

For a moment, she can’t process this.

What?

How can it be empty? She has an entire collection of textbooks that permanently live in her locker. She hasn’t moved them since the beginning of the year, not unless she’s taking them to class – but she puts them right back. She even alphabetised them the other day!

Where can they have possibly gone?

She leans in closer, as if they’re hiding right at the back of it. She can’t even think where her stuff would have disappeared to. She certainly didn’t move them. And the only other people who would have the means to are Piper and Thalia, but she’s sure that she’s threatened them enough with bodily harm should any damage befall her fancy graphing calculator – which has also disappeared – that they keep a wide berth. She furrows her brow, completely dumbfounded.

At that moment, her eyes fall upon a slip of paper tucked at the very back of her locker, underneath the ugly magnet Piper had brought back for her from the Bahamas. She frowns, reaches in, and prises it free, unfolding it.

In blocky handwriting, it says: _Hey! I’m part of the Argo cast and I’m borrowing your locker for this season, hope that’s okay! You have a lot of textbooks, you’re probably pretty smart. I think they were moved to the reception for the time being. What in God’s name would make you want to take advanced Math?_

That’s how it starts.

*

“ _You_ ,” Annabeth greets venomously Piper at lunch.

“Me,” Piper agrees. Then: “What about me?”

Annabeth points at her accusingly. “One of your castmates is a _criminal_.”

Piper frowns. “What?”

“I have just come back from the main office,” Annabeth explains, “to retrieve my belongings. Belongings that should currently be residing in my locker.” To punctuate, she lifts her rescued pile of textbooks and slams them onto the table. Piper flinches, and sagely Annabeth thinks, _good_. She’s conditioned them both well enough that even the sight of her books have them looking away in fear. “You want to know why they are not, though?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” Piper says, meekly.

“Correct,” Annabeth says. “They aren’t, because someone broke into it over the weekend while you were filming and moved them. Look!” She waves the note in Piper’s face. Piper blinks a little, and then plucks it out of her hand, peering at it. “My locker is mine alone! I’m pretty sure this constitutes as a form of breaking and entering.”

Piper’s mouth forms the words as she reads the note, and then she frowns. “We made sure to film away from the senior hallway.”

Annabeth sighs. “My locker isn’t in the senior hallway. It’s in the science department.”

Piper frowns. “What? Why?”

“No one has their locker there!” Annabeth defends. “I don’t get trampled between periods.”

Piper rolls her eyes with a huff of laughter. “Well, that explains that, then.”

“Explains what?”

“We film all the locker shots in the science department. Chiron asked me if we had a place in school with a bunch of empty lockers to use, I didn’t realise you were holed up in there.”

Chastised, Annabeth says meekly, “It was a tactical move.”

“I’m sure.” Piper reads over the note again. “It’s sort of cute that whoever it is left you a note, though.”

“Do you know who it is?”

She shrugs. “I don’t recognise the handwriting. Besides, I don’t know what your locker looks like.”

“Yeah, but—” Annabeth flounders. “There must be something you can do.”

“Something I can do?”

“To get them to change lockers?”

“We’ve already started shooting, we can’t.”

Annabeth knows that she’s massively overreacting and just needs to drop it, but still: “But that’s not fair. They’re putting my education in jeopardy for what, some establishing shots?”

Piper snorts. “Jeopardy?”

“Why are you laughing?”

Annabeth can’t think of a single thing that’s funny about this. Piper evidently doesn’t share the same sentiment, because she’s still snickering, until she catches sight of her face, and immediately sobers. “Sorry.”

“It’s not funny,” Annabeth says. “This is serious.”

“I know, sorry.”

Just the sound of Piper’s contrite voice is enough for Annabeth to suddenly realise what an asshole she’s being. She feels all her anger expel from her in a rush, and she sighs, slumping forward on the table. “No, I’m sorry. I’m being overdramatic.”

“Yeah, not gonna argue with that.” Piper is aiming for levity, but her expression softens when Annabeth can only manage a smile back. “Is everything all right, Beth? You look tired.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. I just—” Annabeth knuckles one of her eyes, hard enough to see static like stars. “Didn’t get heaps of sleep, last night. A little bit crabby.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Somehow, Piper looks even more concerned. “Are you having trouble sleeping again?”

“What? No. Of course not.”

“But you’d tell us, if you were, right?”

“Yeah, of course. You know I would. Just a one-off, today.” Piper still looks bothered, so Annabeth rolls her eyes and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze. “I’d tell you if it was getting bad again, okay? I promise.”

Finally, Piper settles, and squeezes her hand back. “Okay. Thanks.”

“Worry-wart.”

“Don’t get on my case, you were the one getting all Hulk over a polite note.” Piper flaps it at her. “Lord knows what would’ve happened if he was rude, you might have flipped a table.”

Annabeth sneers at her, and she laughs. Privately, Annabeth’s a little grateful the subject is dropped: she can already feel an impending headache press at the base of her skull, and the last thing she needs to be doing is fielding any intrusive questions.

It’s probably nothing. She’ll just stop for some Tylenol after school.

Piper seems to sense her sour mood, though, because she squeezes her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Beth, I know how you are about people touching your stuff.”

Annabeth shrugs, and takes a sip of her water. “It’s whatever.”

“Can’t _you_ just swap it out?”

“Drew Tanaka rents out all the spare ones.”

“If she weren’t such a bitch I’d be impressed,” Piper says. “Kind of Machiavellian. How much do you think she’s making?”

“Lord knows. I know Travis Stoll is renting out two just so he can talk to her.”

Piper whistles. “Jeez. Well, I guess you’re kind of stuck, then.” Annabeth groans a little and rests her head on her pile of books, and Piper rubs her shoulder. “Think on the bright side! Your locker is technically famous.”

Annabeth glares at her half-heartedly. “Yes, that was a goal of mine, glad it’s been achieved. Up there with winning a Nobel Peace Prize.”

“Look at these theatrics! And you say I’m the drama queen.” Annabeth rolls her eyes. Piper must sense that she’s actually a little more bothered about it than she’s putting on, because her face softens, and she squeezes her shoulder. “Hey, chin up, all right? It’ll probably be fine.”

*

Thing is, it’s _not_ fine.

After the first time, Annabeth tells herself to grow up and get used to it. It’s a pain in the ass but there are far worse things going on in the world – and her own life – to be concerned with. She just needs to get over herself.

At least, that’s what she tells herself, until the next morning when she is late to first period, because she hadn’t realised retrieving her belongings from the reception was going to be a daily thing. She walks away with a detention slip in her pocket and her fists clenched.

The utter _nerve_ of this asshole! Not only is this inconveniencing her in her studies, but her perfect record is also getting ruined as well. She’s only had a handful of detentions in high school so far and she will be damned if some actor thinks he can just waltz right in and tarnish her reputation as a good student. She’s pretty sure she could put in a pretty wicked complaint if she so wished: when they first started filming at Merriweather, the crew had promised to be as little an inconvenience as possible, and she thinks something like this would register as a pretty frigging huge one.

By the third time, she is ready and entirely willing to start busting heads. She remembers the note that the person had folded up and pinned to the back of the locker with Piper’s magnet. Before she can even properly think it through, she pulls her notebook out of her backpack and rips out a page.

_Change the locker, please. That isn’t a question._

She doesn’t even fold it, lets her angry lettering hang loose so there is no missing it when this asshole next opens her locker. She slams it shut and stalks off, smouldering.

That’ll show him.

But then, the next morning, instead of her books, there’s a new note.

_No can do, sorry! Continuity, and that jazz. I realise it was probably not great of me to steal it from you so I left you a roll-pop._

Annabeth frowns, and then slowly produces the lime roll-pop that’s lying in the middle of her locker. She can’t even fathom it. This kid seriously thinks a lollipop is going to make up for the disturbance that his presence now is in her life? _Seriously_?

Before she can think, she scribbles out her own response, and throws the lollipop in the trash on her way out.

*

_I’m allergic to lime._

_Cherry?_

_Also allergic to cherry._

_Wow, sad life._

_Seriously. Change the locker. This is inconveniencing me in my studies to keep having to rescue my stuff from the reception._

*

Annabeth jerks awake to the sound of shouting.

For a few moments, her brain lags behind: _what time is it? What’s going on? Was I asleep?_ Then she catches sight of the alarm clock that she hasn’t used for the past three months reading 7:42 and thinks, _oh shit_!

She flies out of bed like a whippet, tripping over her shoes in her haste. How the hell did she oversleep? The irony is not lost on her in the slightest. She forgoes a shower, just splashes water in her face and under her armpits, and picks up the first pair of jeans she sees on her bedroom floor. As she hurriedly gets changed, her mind flies over the previous evening: she thinks she remembers nodding off somewhere around five, but she’d woken up twenty minutes later with a crick in her neck and a sore ass from sitting in the sill – is it possible she’d fallen asleep _again_? She’s never ever getting that cocky with her alarm clock ever again.

“Damn it,” she hisses, as she haphazardly shoves all her books in her bag. The screaming that had woken her up only gets louder: it’s coming from downstairs, Bobby, sounds like, and she thinks she can also hear Athena, too, shouting at him to be quiet and eat his breakfast, and now Matthew’s crying as well.

She brushes her teeth at the same time as she crams on her shoes and runs a comb through her hair, and flies down the stairs like a whippet. She glances at the time, five minutes to her train, _shoot_ , grabs an apple from the fruit bowl, is about to run out of the door when—

“Annabeth?” Athena shouts from the living room. “Can you come here, please?”

Annabeth barely suppresses a scream. “Mom, I need to leave, I’m late—”

“Can you not defy me right now?”

She inhales, holds for three, breathes out. Then she walks in. “What?”

Athena is stood at the head of the table, in her customary pantsuit, charcoal grey this time, but it has a dark seeping stain down the front. Annabeth hasn’t seen her this frazzled in a very long time. Her hair is escaping its sleek bun, and she’s only wearing one earring, the other in her hand. Bobby and Matthew are sat next to her, wailing, tears pouring down their cheeks.

“Can you tell your brothers to just eat their breakfast?” Athena snaps, as she feels around for her ear, trying to put her earring through. “They’re not listening to me.”

Annabeth stares at her, and then looks down at what they’re eating. She frowns. “Is that cereal?”

“What does it look like?”

“And you used cow’s milk?”

Athena stares at her like she’s gone mad. “Yes?”

“Are you serious?”

“What?”

“They’re lactose intolerant! They can’t have cow’s milk!”

Athena’s hand pauses. “What?”

“How do you not _know_ this?”

“I tried to tell her,” Bobby sobs.

Annabeth can’t believe what’s happening. She is going to be late, damn it, she can’t deal with this right now! “Are you _serious_? We have soya milk for this exact reason!”

Athena has the audacity to look like this is her fault. “Why did no one tell me?”

Annabeth gapes at her. “Tell you— you’re their _mother_!” She turns to Bobby and Matthew. “Where’s Dad? Why isn’t he making you breakfast?”

“He had to go in early for work,” Matthew says.

Frustratedly, Annabeth rakes a hand through her hair, and checks her phone. Two minutes until the train, now. She’s definitely missed it. “How much have they eaten?”

“I don’t know! Half a bowl?”

She cannot believe this. “Well, they can’t go to school. They’re gonna be sick.”

Athena stares at her, and the looks at Bobby and Matthew. “I didn’t know.”

Annabeth knows that she should just leave it, that she should get the twins cleaned up and sorted and then get to school like she’s meant to be doing right now, but for some reason she feels something inside of her snap. “That’s the problem! You don’t know, Mom! You never know, because you’re not around!”

“Don’t you dare start on me—”

“Why are you even here? Does it make you feel good knowing that once a month you take a break from your shiny upper-class laugh and pop in with your reject family—”

“Annabeth—” Athena shouts, but Annabeth finds she can’t stop.

“All you do is just come home and mess things up!”

“How dare you speak to me like that? I am your mother!”

“Then _act like it_ , you _selfish_ _bitch_ ,” Annabeth shouts, and suddenly it’s like the all the air has been sucked out of the room and everyone falls dead silent. Her chest seizes with panic. She hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

Even Bobby and Matthew have shut up, staring at her with wide damp eyes. From the front of the room, Athena simply stares at her, mouth open. The hand holding her earring has frozen by her ear. It is as though all the air has been sucked out of the room, preserving them in this terrible tableau forever. Annabeth feels something like panic, ugly and white-hot, crawl up her oesophagus. She’s never spoken to her like that before.

Just looking at her, at the stain on her pantsuit and the wisps of hair escaping her bun, suddenly has Annabeth feeling very, very tired. She sets her jaw, and tightens her grip on the strap of her bag.

“I need to go to school,” she says, quieter. “Sort them out, they’re your kids.”

And then she’s gone.

As she thought, she’s missed her train, and also the one after it, but honestly she can’t even find it in her to care, so she sits at the station and puts her head in her hand and tells herself to just keep breathing as she waits for the next one. Her hands are trembling a little.

It’s the same old story, every single time. Athena just swoops in for a day, tries to slot herself back in their lives, but then something always goes wrong, real life encroaches too close, as she realises the magnitude of what she has returned to, and then she disappears for another month. Annabeth is _sick_ of it. She’s sick of having to put together the pieces when Bobby and Matthew ask where Mom’s gone and when she’ll be back, or when Frederick awkwardly corners her in the kitchen and asks if she’s heard from her mother. She’s sick of it. Athena keeps walking this awkward tightrope between being present and being gone, like an intangible projection, and at this point Annabeth would rather she just leave for good, rather than appearing bimonthly for two days and screwing things up further.

Her eyes prickle with tears, and she swipes at them furiously.

Whatever. She’ll be gone soon enough. Then her life can go back to normal.

*

By the time Annabeth reaches the school, she’s already half an hour late, so she decides it probably won’t hurt to make a quick pitstop at the drugstore on the way in, just for some Tylenol; she’s had a faint headache at the base of her skull since she woke up, but sitting for twenty minutes on a train swallowing tears has only made it worse, and she knows she won’t be able to get through an entire period of oral presentations with a migraine. Outside the store, she ducks into an alley, prises open the packet. _Take 2 every 4-6 hours_ , it says, so she takes three, swallows them down with a sip from her water bottle, and then heads into school.

Her mood only sours further when she’s stopped at the doors and given a late slip, and then again when she enters her Calculus class and Mr Ryerson calls out her lateness in front of the whole room, then demands she solve the current problem on the board before she sits down. It’s not particularly hard, and she knows it, but the Tylenol hasn’t kicked in and her head is still pounding so she can’t work out an answer and instead just stands there, like an idiot. After a few moments of floundering Ryerson thankfully lets her sit down but it’s just so humiliating that she has to bite her tongue hard to stop the frustrated tears that have welled up in her eyes from spilling down her cheeks. Across the room, she can see Thalia give her a concerned look, but she pointedly ignores it. She can’t do sympathy right now.

By the time breaktime rolls around, all she wants to do is lock herself in a bathroom stall and have a cry, but fate clearly is not with her on this, because before she can slink off, Thalia grabs her arm. “Hey,” she says, “what was that?”

Annabeth feigns ignorance. “What was what?”

“You being late! I only showed up to Calculus today because you’re always on my case about skipping it and then you’re not there yourself!” She jostles their arms together. “What’s with that, huh? It doesn’t feel the same when you’re not next to me correcting my working out.”

“That’s because you refuse to learn the trig ratios.”

Thalia scoffs, like this is a wholly unreasonable request. “Yeah, _cos_ trig is a _sin_. Also I have a _tan_.” She frowns. “Couldn’t work it in naturally.”

“It’s pronounced _sine_ , but A- for effort.”

“Whatever, at least I showed up on time. Did you get a detention?”

Annabeth flaps the late slip at her half-heartedly, and Thalia crows, snatching it up like gold.

“Ha! Didn’t think I’d ever see one of these in your goody two-shoes hands.”

Annabeth snatches it back. “Whatever. I need to get it stamped at reception.”

“Come with me to the cafeteria first? I promised we’d meet Piper there and I want a bagel.”

Annabeth lets Thalia drag her along. By now, the painkillers have set in, and her migraine has settled to something of a faint thump at the base of her skull, but she still feels tired and stretched too thin, ready to snap at any sort of pressure. Oblivious, Thalia navigates the crowded hallways, pushing past people until they find Piper sat at one of the tables by herself, on her phone. When she sees them coming she brightens.

“Hey, ladies,” she says. “Annabeth, nice to see you’ve finally rocked up.”

“Overslept,” Annabeth mutters, sliding into the seat across from her.

“I’m sure,” Piper says, agreeably. She catches Thalia’s wrist as she passes to get her bagel, blinks up through her lashes at her. “Get me something too?”

“Get your own food, I’m not your slave.”

Piper is unbothered, just lets her wrist go and watches as she pushes towards the queue.

“What about your big actor paycheque?” Annabeth says. “Are we going to start reaping the benefits soon?”

Piper clutches her chest. “I’m beginning to think all you’re with me for is my money and celebrity.”

“Well, it’s not your charming personality,” Annabeth says, and squawks when Piper kicks her under the table. “Hey! Also, nice of yourself to call it ‘celebrity’.”

“Shut up, I’m totally a celebrity. Who’s the one with sixty thousand Instagram followers between us?”

“Wow, sixty thousand followers. Call the press, we have a certified A-lister within our midst.”

“Don’t be jealous, it’s not a good look.” She kicks her again, but affectionately this time, and when Annabeth tries to kick her back she traps her foot between both of her own, keeping it there. “Seriously, is everything okay? It’s not like you to be late.”

Annabeth shakes her head. “Yeah, it’s fine, just—stress, you know.”

Piper’s gaze feels almost too-knowing. “At home?”

Annabeth picks at a stray sugar packet, not meeting her eyes. “I can handle it, it’s not a big deal.”

“Is it your mom?”

She shrugs.

“You know you can talk to us, yeah?”

“Yeah, I know. It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Piper says, but she doesn’t look like she totally believes her. “Just—my window’s open anytime.”

Annabeth smiles at her gratefully. “Thanks, Pipes.”

“What are we talking about?” Thalia says, appearing over her shoulder. She drops into the seat across from them, half a bagel hanging out of her mouth. “Is Piper spilling Argo secrets?”

Annabeth frowns. “Have you already eaten half your bagel?”

Piper mimes zipping her mouth. “Locked vault, me.”

“Is that judgment?” Thalia says to Annabeth. “They’re good bagels.”

“You are a garbage disposal.”

Thalia sticks out her tongue, showing a mouthful of half-chewed bread, and Annabeth cringes away.

“Put that away, you’re offending everyone.”

“ _You’re_ offending everyone,” Thalia mutters, but she dutifully swallows before she next speaks. “Does anyone have any news? Any boy updates? Piper? How’s Bookstore Boy?”

Piper blushes. “He’s all right.”

“Have you asked him out yet?”

“No.” Shyly: “I think I might soon, though.”

Annabeth and Thalia crow. “Way to go!” Annabeth says, bumping their ankles together. “He’s an idiot if he says anything other than yes.”

Piper glows under their praise. “Thanks, guys.”

“What are you thinking?” Thalia says. “Ambushing him after work? Name-dropping your celebrity status?”

“I’m not going to _ambush_ him,” Piper says, though her ears are pink. Annabeth has never been so glad she cannot read minds. “And I don’t want to tell him about that just yet, I don’t want to scare him away. I just—I feel like it’s the right time, you know? Life is too short for me to worry about this sort of thing.”

“Atta girl!” Thalia says, and gives her a high-five, before turning to Annabeth. “What about you, Beth? Any new men in your life?”

“Not really,” Annabeth says.

Piper points at her. “Not totally true! What about your locker buddy?”

“Who?” Thalia says.

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “I’m not thinking about a relationship with him, don’t be stupid.”

“Annabeth’s sharing a locker with one of the crew members of Argo this season,” Piper tells Thalia, smugly. “It’s true love.”

“It’s not—” Annabeth starts exasperatedly, but Thalia cuts her off with an incredulous, “You’re _sharing_ your locker? And you haven’t killed him yet?”

“They exchange _love notes_ ,” Piper drawls.

“Oh, you _would_ ,” Thalia crows, “in between your books, between classes, _oh, Annabeth, prove Pythagoras theorem_ , _let me leave evidence on my love pressed delicate between the pages of my molecular biology textbook_ —”

Piper bursts into peals of laughter, and Annabeth rolls her eyes as she stoops to pick up her bag so hard her headache comes back in full force. It’s only slightly worth it, for the way Piper and Thalia snigger at her.

“Whatever,” she says, and stands. “I’m gonna go before you embarrass yourselves anymore.”

“Give him kisses from us!” Piper calls, and Thalia smacks her lips together so loudly some kids on the table behind them turn around. Annabeth flips them off as she leaves, and the last thing she hears before she exits is them bursting into laughter again.

Talking to them was a welcome reprieve, and enough to momentarily alleviate her migraine, but as soon as she steps out of the cafeteria into the quiet hallways that always smell damply of spoiled milk, it’s like being doused with cold water. And now she has to go and get her late slip stamped at reception, who are always going to have questions: especially when they see it’s her. She’s trying not to make a habit of being late, but she knows that this isn’t the first time, not recently, and she’s really not up for that particular interrogation.

Miss Hestia, the kind lady who does admin, gives her a sympathetic look when she comes in.

“Late again, Annabeth?” she says.

Annabeth doesn’t meet her eyes, just scribbles her name in the admin book with probably more force than necessary. “Sorry,” she says. “Overslept.”

Miss Hestia takes the book from her, frowns a little at Annabeth’s chicken scrawl. The look she gives her is far too knowing. “This is happening a lot, recently,” she says gently.

“Am I going to get a detention?”

Hestia gives her a long look. Finally, she sighs. “No,” she says, “I’ll keep this between us.”

“Thanks.” Annabeth makes a move to leave, before she realises that while she’s here, she may as well also collect her things: it’ll skip the middle man, at least, of her unnecessarily checking her locker. “Can I have my books as well?”

Hestia frowns at her. “Your books?”

Every other day she’s just given them straight over. Annabeth’s brow creases. “Yeah, weren’t they handed in here last night for filming?”

“The young man took them back afterwards.”

Annabeth pauses. “What?”

Hestia mistakes her surprise for concern. “Why, are they missing?”

“Uh...” Annabeth feels strangely struck. “Uh, no, I haven’t checked, yet.”

“Well, they’re probably there, then.” Hestia smiles at her, and hands her a late slip. “Have a good day, Annabeth.” Her voice feels almost too knowing, like she is peeling back the layers and looking right into Annabeth and her fleshy vulnerable heart to the chasm where she’s keeping all her secrets.

Once upon a time Annabeth was nice to teachers like Hestia. Today, she just takes the slip and says, “You too.” The light in Hestia’s eyes dims a little, but she simply nods at her, and Annabeth shoves it in her pocket and heads out.

She doesn’t have the time to dwell on that, anyway, not when her locker mate has apparently _returned her books to her locker_. It feels so out of character for this person she’s created from what titbits he’s let seep into his notes – mainly that he’s a pain in the ass and has a seemingly unlimited supply of roll-pops – that she doesn’t even dare believe it’s true. Her mind spins as she mechanically heads up the stairs to the science department. He’s probably just playing a prank on her – not ill-intentioned, he doesn’t seem to be malicious – but inconvenient in a way he probably can’t understand, because he’s making money under-acting in a shaky-camera web series, and probably thinks that she’ll find it funny if he puts her books in a trashcan, or something, probably not understanding just how frustrating and unfunny it would be instead. She’s going to get to her locker and it’ll be empty, except for a snide note or something, _check the bin in room 43!,_ and then she’s going to have to fish all her textbooks and her expensive graphing calculator out of a trashcan, and it’s going to be covered in someone’s yoghurt, or the remnants of a Lucozade, or whatever.

_That_ fits the person she’s constructed. There will probably be a roll-pop in the locker too, just to add insult to injury, in a flavour she likes. He’s been unfairly good at that.

Yeah. That’s probably what happened.

She reaches her locker, and pauses. Then she opens it.

Her textbooks are all neatly arranged against the back of it like they always are. They’re even still in alphabetical order. Her notebook and her calculator are piled on top of each other in front of them – and, resting on top of them, is a folded-up piece of paper.

Annabeth takes it.

_I didn’t realise it was disrupting your school work. Sorry._

Her bad mood dissipates out of her in a rush. She stares at it, feeling the paper crinkle between her hands. He’s even drawn a little doodle next to it, an apologetic-looking face without a nose and hair that sticks up straight like forks. It’s so goofy and seems so sincere that she can’t even bring herself to muster up the energy to throw away the roll-pop, which she also produces from her locker.

She stares at it as she rolls it between her fingers. It’s grape. Her favourite flavour. She hasn’t had one of these for years.

For the first time, she doesn’t throw the note away. Instead, she folds it, tucks it next to the late slip in her pocket, and unwraps the roll pop.

(It’d be a waste if she didn’t.)

*

Something changes, after that.

Annabeth still doesn’t like her locker-mate, not exactly – but she doesn’t resent him anymore. Knowing that she doesn’t have to make a daily pitstop at the reception definitely is a contributing factor, but she thinks it’s also something else. There’s something almost comforting about sharing a locker, like they’re simply co-existing alongside each other. She thinks he’s noticed that she’s not as anal about it, anymore, because then he starts leaving things behind: mainly notes, but sometimes other pieces of confectionary, like roll-pops and wrapped humbugs and pieces of toffee. She never responds, but it’s still almost weirdly nice, to open her locker in the mornings and find something waiting for her.

The only indication she gives that she’s actually engaging is that she never leaves them in the locker, always takes them out. Still, if she thought that would dissuade him, she was mistaken: if anything, the notes seem to get more and more frequent, like he’s trying to goad her into responding.

_Drew this while I was waiting for my scene, hope u enjoy :^)_

_Did you know that if you cut off the arm of a starfish it would grow right back? How cool is that?_

_I was so bored during filming that I taught myself three letters in Morse code._

_Catering tonight had ice cream, but I’m also pretty sure you would actually explode if you found a melted ice cream cone in your locker, so liquorice! Hope u aren’t throwing these away btw 167, that would be pretty heartbreaking :^)_

She isn’t, though she’d never tell him. The sweets are usually pretty small, just something he probably nicked off one of the catering tables during filming, so most mornings she’s become accustomed to enjoying them during first period. She puts them in her mouth and then just sits there and lets it dissolve on her tongue, filling her mouth with sweetness. Especially since now she’s taken to missing breakfast, because she just can’t stand to be at home any longer than she has to, and having something, albeit small and pretty unhealthy, is enough to make her morning just a little less terrible.

Then one day, she pulls her textbooks out of her locker, and is completely unprepared for the onslaught of crumbs that comes with them. They spill out all down her front and all over the floor, and when she glances at the bottom of her books she finds that some have even wormed between the pages.

Dear God. And just when she was beginning to warm to him as well.

“Jeez, Bethie,” Piper says with a laugh, as she watches Annabeth crossly sweep the rest of the crumbs from out of the locker. “Do you have a bakery back there?”

“It wasn’t me,” Annabeth mutters, exasperated. They have even managed to get into the very back. Did he empty an entire tin of Panko in there or something?

Piper frowns. “Someone broke in your locker and filled it with crumbs?”

“No, it was my locker-buddy.”

“Oh, right.” Piper’s face eases in realisation. “The criminal castmate strikes again.” She leans against the locker next to her, watching as Annabeth scrapes the last remnants that have fallen into the corners. “How’s that going, by the way? Didn’t you say that he started bringing your books back?”

“Right, yes, the bare minimum of basic decency.”

“Ooh, crabby, crabby,” Piper says. She pokes Annabeth’s nose. “Do I spot a Sulky Susan?”

Annabeth swats her away. “Stop speaking like that, it’s weird.”

“I jest, I jest. And don’t worry, I do get it. You know Thalia left a doughnut in my drawer last month? I found it last night! I don’t even know how it ended up in there.”

Annabeth initially plans on just leaving it, but something inside of her almost convulses at the thought of this going any further and ending up with something much worse in her locker, like juice, or milk, or any sort of perishable food, and before she can really think it through, she’s ripping out a page from her notebook and scrawling out a note.

_You left crumbs in my locker._

The next morning, there’s a response.

_Are you also allergic to those?_

_It’s unsanitary._

_I think they fell out of my notebook. I ate a muffin over it._

_Why was your notebook in my locker?_

_TV realism. Don’t you watch the show?_

_No._

_I hear from an insider source that it’s actually pretty good._

_I don’t have any time. I’m too busy cleaning bagel crumbs out of my locker._

_Ouch! I probably deserved that. Do lemon sherbets make it up?_

*

By the time Annabeth arrives to History, Piper and Thalia are already in deep conversation, Piper with an arm hooked over the back of her chair so she can talk to Thalia behind her. Annabeth can’t estimate a guess from their expressions, but as she approaches she hears Thalia say, “Just say that you’re famous” and figures that she probably doesn’t have to know to know that she should step in before the advice gets any worse.

“Hey, guys,” she says, as she swings into the seat next to them, resting her bag on her table. “What’s going on?”

Thalia turns to her immediately. “Can you tell Piper to stop being a drama queen?”

“That’s a leading question!” Piper protests.

“I don’t need to be asked a leading question to know that you are being a drama queen,” Annabeth says, and Piper frowns in outrage. Annabeth turns to Thalia. “What’s going on?”

Thalia cocks a thumb at Piper. “Little Miss Fuss over here is going to ask out Hot Bookstore Boy today and she’s freaking out.”

Piper makes a sound of indignation. “I’m not freaking out!” she says, looking exactly like someone who is freaking out. Annabeth doesn’t think she’s seen her hair or clothes this rumpled since she started on Argo and the producers stepped in to make her look less like a homeless man living under a bridge. “I just want this to be perfect.”

“And it will be,” Annabeth soothes. “What are you so worried about?”

Piper stares at her, like she’s insulted she even asked. “Uh, so many things? What if he says no?”

“Oh, like he’ll say no, come on.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Piper,” Thalia cuts in, “he hand-made you a bookmark on Valentine’s Day. There is not a single planet in this universe in which he says no. Come on. Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not stupid,” Piper argues, but the harsh line of her shoulders has dropped, a little. She runs her thumbnail under the line of her lip. “You really think so?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Annabeth says emphatically.

“And if worse comes to worst,” Thalia says, “just drop the _I’m famous_ card.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes, but before she can say anything further their teacher Ms Dodds walks in. They exchange one last look – mainly involving Piper looking distressed and Annabeth trying to convey _you are brilliant!_ through her eyebrows (Thalia has already put her head on her desk to nap) – before turning to face the front, as Ms Dodds starts the class.

With a sigh, Annabeth lifts her bag into her lap and starts pulling out all her equipment for the lesson. It isn’t until she produces an unfamiliar blue textbook that she has no recollection of ever purchasing that she realises that something is wrong.

“Miss Chase,” says a voice, and when she sharply glances up she sees Ms Dodds looming over her shoulder, her lips twisted with a sneer. “You are aware that this is US History, aren’t you?”

Bewildered, Annabeth stares down at the _Astrophysics_ emblazoned across the front of the book. She doesn’t even _take_ Physics, let alone Astrophysics. Where the hell did this come from? “Uh,” she says, trying to keep the confusion out of her voice, “...yes?”

Ms Dodds simply rolls her eyes, and taps her fingers against the front of the book. “Then I suggest you put this away, and turn to page sixty-four like the rest of your classmates.”

Annabeth nods quickly, feeling her cheeks flush, and digs around in her backpack, praying that she somehow also picked up her History textbook. Thankfully, it’s there, and she retrieves it with a sigh of relief, but as she flips to the correct page and listens to Ms Dodds settle into her customary drone, her mind whirs. She nudges the Astrophysics book out from under it and stares at the cover, like it’ll somehow give her answers to wherever it came from. It doesn’t seem too dissimilar to something she’d pick up from the library, but she hasn’t visited in weeks, and she never checks books out anymore, it gives her an excuse to stay late and miss dinner. Curiously, she flips open the first page, to see if she can find an owner.

In blue Biro on the inside cover, someone has scrawled _property of Argo crew and cast_.

That’s that, then. It must be a prop textbook from the set – though that doesn’t explain how it ended up in her possession. She’s sure the props department would be pretty anal about textbooks getting loose, especially since out of everything, they’d probably be the most likely to go missing, with how innocuous they are in a school environment. Piper got enough grief when she tried to sneak out with some barrettes, so Annabeth isn’t sure how she managed to get away with stealing an entire textbook.

Then she realises. It must have been her locker-mate.

He mentioned that he put his notebook in the locker – he probably also put in some prop textbooks, as well, and he must have left them behind when he put the rest of Annabeth’s stuff in. This morning she had sort of done a blind grope for her books as she also tried to wrangle on a jumper, so she must have accidentally pulled out one of the prop books alongside all her actual work.

For some reason, it’s sort of—weirdly endearing, to know that he accidentally left behind one of the props. There wasn’t a piece of candy this morning, either, just a quick doodle of a person looking in horror at a row of empty tables. Underneath, he had written _horror movie come to life: no candy at catering last night, hope you can forgive me_ with a sad face. She smiles down at the book, before she realises what she’s doing, and slams it shut.

God, what? Is she getting sentimental over a boy being _forgetful_? Jeez. She needs to pull herself together.

Still, she can’t help it, when, after class, she makes a quick detour to her locker, and leaves behind another note.

_I think you left a textbook._

The next morning, there’s a response.

_Yeah, sorry! Didn’t mean to lol. Got in trouble for doing that._

She fingers it, thoughtfully. This is normally where she just leaves it. Aside from a few exceptions, she usually doesn’t respond, just takes the candy from the locker – a jolly rancher this time, orange, her favourite – and folds the note into her back pocket. But something about this time makes her almost want to: objectively, she’s always known that whoever is at the other end of this correspondence is a living, breathing human, but something as inane as finding one of his textbooks that he’s probably spent hours staring at as they did take after take has weirdly humanised him, made him tangible in a way weeks of notes and candies couldn’t. For the first time, she is aware that whoever doing all this is an actual person.

She hesitates – and then reaches for her notebook.

_Do you do Physics?_

It’s the most pathetic of olive branches, but she can’t think of anything else. Already regretting it, she scrunches it up tightly and tucks it in the very back corner, a part of her hoping that maybe he won’t notice, and then heads off to her next lesson and tries to put it at the very back of her mind.

But then, the next morning, there’s a response.

_Nope, just another part of TV realism. I’m awful at school._

This, Annabeth thinks, is where it begins.

*

_Is that why you’re an actor?_

_Do I sense judgment, 167? I’ll have you know that acting is one of the most reliable, respectable professions out there, along with doctors and lawyers ;-D no I’m kidding, yeah, sort of! Wasn’t super great at academics so I thought I’d give theatre a try, and so far I think it’s been going ok. What about you, are you a science nerd? I’m guessing so, based on all the books you have in your locker._

_I like Maths. A bit of Physics, too._

_Does that mean you can understand any of the garbage in that textbook I left behind? Because wow. That’s pretty sick. Would you want to go into Physics, then, when you graduate? Become and astronaut and inhabit Mars?_

_I don’t know if I want to. Space sort of scares me._

_Really?_

_The concept of infinity makes me feel weird. I don’t really know how to explain it._

_No, I kind of get it._

_You do?_

_Sort of. I mean, ‘infinity’ is just a weirdass idea if you think about it too long._

_You know there’s a number called Graham’s number, that’s meant to encapsulate the size of the universe. If it was possible to put every single digit of it in our minds it would literally make our brains explode because it is so large it is beyond comprehension._

_Whoa._

_Sorry._

_No, it’s cool! I mean, freaky, and now I think I’m also a bit scared by infinity, but cool. I take it not Physics, then?_

_Probably not. I think I’d like to go into something like architecture instead, the less theoretical part of Math. Shapes and stuff. I’d like to make something permanent._

_Isn’t that a bit like infinity, though?_

_Slow infinity. Infinity in one direction. I won’t have to be there for it._

_Deep._

_I guess._

_It’s pretty cool, though, that you like architecture. I wish my brain could do that stuff. Instead I just have to lug around these textbooks and stare at them on set and pretend they make any sense._

*

Annabeth reads over the latest note with a small smile on her lips. She traces over _it’s pretty cool_ , wryly. She’s honestly not sure what brought her to tell him all this stuff – stuff about her fear of infinity and her desire to become an architect, stuff she doesn’t think she’s told anyone – but something about his casual, simple acceptance of it, soothes the edge in the back of her mind that she hadn’t realised was rubbed raw. She folds it carefully, slides it carefully between the pages of her notebook, and then for the first time notices the Astrophysics book.

She huffs out a laugh. This is the third time it’s made its appearance in her locker in as many weeks. Annabeth smiles a little fondly at the sight of it, crammed alongside her belongings, and pulls it out, admiring the front cover. At this point she feels like she sees it more than she sees some of her own.

“What is that?” says a voice over her shoulder, and when she turns she sees Thalia peering down at the book warily, like if she gets too close it’ll bite her. “Astrophysics? What the hell?”

“Light reading,” Annabeth says.

Thalia points at her. “You can’t even joke about that, because I am never sure when it comes to you. For all I know you could be reading up on Astrophysics in your free time. I mean, does Merriweather even offer Astrophysics? Where did you get that from?”

Annabeth laughs, and slots it back in, instead pulling out all her books for her upcoming classes. “It’s a prop book. My locker-mate left it behind.” She quickly tears out a sheet of paper from her notepad, scribbling _you left your book again_ on it before scrunching it up and throwing it in. When she glances up, she sees Thalia is giving her a significant look. “What?”

“You make life so very entertaining,” she says, bizarrely, but before Annabeth can ask what that’s supposed to mean, she leans against the locker next to hers, and folds her arms. “Hey, do you want to hang out later night, by the way? Me, you, Piper?”

Annabeth frowns, closing her locker. “Doesn’t Piper have her date with Hot Bookstore Boy today?”

“She does? Wow, I would not have known, it’s not like she’s mentioned it every three minutes so far.” Thalia rolls her eyes, but not without affection. “Yeah, she does, but after. We can do a recon mission and discuss further proceedings.” Then she shrugs, wholly unself-consciously. “Also I feel like we haven’t hung out properly, the three of us.”

Annabeth smiles. On the surface, Thalia is the strangest of contradictions, but at the end of the day, at her core, she’s a genuinely really, really good friend. “Yeah, that sounds great. What time are you thinking?”

“Not sure, probably around seven or eight? They should be done with the date by then, right? Lover-boy’s picking her up at five, it can’t last any longer than that.”

“Unless they go home together.”

“I don’t have that much faith in her,” Thalia says. “Besides, you think someone who works in a bookstore is the kind to take someone home on the first date? Come on. He wears polos. They probably won’t get any further than a chaste porch kiss.”

“You never know, book nerds can be all sorts of freaky where you wouldn’t expect it.”

“Ooh, and you’d know, yeah? What kind of freak are you under the sheets, Chase? Do you get really kinky and bust out the gradient function graphs?” She playfully snaps the waistband of Annabeth’s jeans with a snigger, and Annabeth swats her away. “Sorry, kidding, couldn’t resist. So, tonight? Sound like a plan?”

Annabeth smiles. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Thalia looks pleased at this. “Great,” she says, and slings an arm around her shoulders as they both start to move away from the lockers to their next class. “By the way, did you end up writing that essay for old Alexander? And can I copy it?”

*

When Annabeth gets home that afternoon, she knows something is wrong.

The house has always been too big for them, it was passed down from Frederick’s father, but it never seemed to fit them well, like it was an ill-fitting jumper that a mother insisted they’d grow into. But they never did, instead they grew like tumours inside of it. There are four of them but sometimes Annabeth swears it is like they are all ghosts, because the house never responds to them.

That’s how it feels now, when she steps inside, and feels the house take a breath, a sigh. It is a lot emptier than it was that morning: Bobby and Matthew both eating toast, this time, and Athena smouldering at the head of the table like look what I have achieved? She doesn’t eat in the mornings. Annabeth loathes being anything like her mother but she doesn’t, either. Now it just feels a lot larger, like it was beginning to accommodate to a family that suddenly disappeared.

Annabeth isn’t surprised when she passes the spare room and it is completely empty, the coverlet folded down like no one was there at all.

There’s a note in the kitchen, predictably: _I had to go back to New York. I’ll see you at Christmas. Love you._ Annabeth wonders why she writes that: she never says it. She just crumples it up and throws it in the bin, then fishes her phone out of her pocket.

Athena picks up the phone on the third ring. “Athena Chase, speaking.”

“You’re still going by Chase?” Annabeth says, caustic.

“Annabeth,” Athena says. She always has a habit of making Annabeth’s name sound like a chore. “I wasn’t expecting you to call. I left a note in the kitchen.”

“I know.”

There is a long pause. Annabeth presses the tip of her nail against the edge of her lip. She feels the jagged edge where she chewed it off this morning catch, like razors.

Athena finally sighs. “Why are you calling?”

“You should have told them this morning,” Annabeth says.

“I had to catch my flight.”

“You had time.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she says, coldly. “How’s John?”

A deadly pause. “He’s good.”

“You didn’t tell Dad?”

“I didn’t think it was his business.”

“You’re still married.”

Sharply, Athena says, “Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about, or was that it?”

Annabeth feels herself burn. “No. That’s it.”

“Have a good day.”

_I hate you_ , Annabeth almost says, suddenly, and then feels so ill she hangs up without responding, and switches off her phone for good measure, too. She presses a hand against her stomach, feels her breaths, and closes her eyes so tightly she can see stars. The jagged edge of her nail snags against her lip and she thinks it starts to bleed but for a few moments she just lets it pool against her teeth as she tries to pull herself together.

When she opens her eyes, there is blood around her thumbnail, caught in the webs of her fingers, staining her heartline red. She stares at it, before scrubbing at her stinging lip with the side of her hand and moving to the bathroom to wash her mouth.

Frederick comes home with the twins at around six, the boys chattering about their day as he tries to herd them inside, holding their hockey sticks in his arms. Annabeth sits on the stairs, resting her head against the banister, and watches as they shed their sports gear and charge past her to their bedroom, chanting. Frederick hesitates in the entryway, still laden with bags and lunchboxes and various other hockey paraphernalia.

“Hey,” she says, quietly.

“Hey,” he says.

He begins to put away their things, awkwardly, because he’s still not used to being the one to do this sort of thing. He doesn’t know where the hockey sticks are kept, so Annabeth points to the hallway cupboard, and he says, “Of course”, like he knew that all along. She just watches him. She feels very tired.

“Did your mother say what time she was getting home?” he says, as he hangs up the last of their coats.

“She left to New York.”

He pauses, and then turns to her: she sees it happening in ten frames a second, delayed. “Oh,” he says. “Oh.”

She didn’t tell him, either.

“I bought chicken,” he says. “For dinner.” For her, probably.

“I can make it,” Annabeth says, and he gives her a grateful look.

“Thank you.”

Dinner is quiet. The chicken is pretty bland but at least it’s cooked all the way through, and the boys cover it in enough ketchup for it to be unnoticeable. There’s only just enough for the two of them, so Annabeth and Frederick quietly eat their bland, dry chicken without a word, they just drink lots of water to combat it. Bobby and Matthew mainly talk amongst themselves, and Annabeth lets it be background noise as her brain whites out. The only blip comes when Matthew says, “When’s Mom coming home?”

Frederick looks to her. Annabeth says, “she’s not.”

Matthew frowns. Bobby says, “What do you mean?”

“She’s gone back to New York.”

“But she said she’s be here for our game on Friday.”

“Sorry,” Annabeth says. They both look down at their plates.

She cleans up after them on autopilot, when they leave the table, loading their plates into the dishwasher and wiping the table, as Frederick awkwardly hovers around her, putting the clean dishes in the cupboards. She scrubs at the tray the chicken was on under a hot tap, and doesn’t even realise that it is burning her until she feels the tray go white-hot in her hand. She drops it, and notices her hands are scalded bright pink, the skin around her nails white. Piper’s band-aid fell off a few weeks ago, but if she looks hard enough she can still see the nail print, flushed red. She just changes the tap from hot to cold with a sigh.

She feels like she is on a wire, moving driftlessly from room to room. The end of the wire is her bedroom, of course, and she pauses for a moment in the doorway, looking at her bed. She hasn’t properly slept in it for a while. She’s tried every trick in the book, keeping her work space separate, switching off her phone, going off coffee, but they’ve all been fruitless. Tonight she just sheds her clothes, slips into her oldest, comfiest pajamas, and slides between the sheets, her back against the wall. She opens her book.

She doesn’t know how long she’s sat there reading – or not reading, it’s been getting more and more difficult to concentrate these days – but she hears the sound of the house falling asleep, the taps in the bathroom switching on and off as the twins brush their teeth, sees through the crack in the door as all the lights gradually all get switched off. The only lights that will remain on will be her lamp, and the basement, where Frederick has retreated and will remain under this time tomorrow. She sighs, and looks out her window. In the dark, her face is reflected back at her. She’s been avoiding mirrors, recently, so she hasn’t realised just how deep the rings under her eyes have become. Jeez. She swipes a finger under them, as if she can wipe them away like they’re smudged makeup. She needs to start using a high coverage concealer.

She turns back to her book. She isn’t sure how long she is sat there, long after the sky has turned black and the night has started to whisper – but then it starts to whistle.

It isn’t until her windowpane rattles that she realises it’s not the night at all, but someone outside her window. She frowns, her brain coming back online, and properly pulls back the curtains to squint down into her backyard. She can only make out a faint outline, so she scrubs at her eyes, tries to rub away at the stars on the back of her eyelid, and peers closer, vision adjusting to the darkness.

In the colder months her window is a little harder to wrangle open, always needs a firm shoulder shove against it, so when it finally bursts open she almost falls out as well. Then she hears a whispered, “ _Shit_!” when she is hit in the face with a dozen pebbles.

Annabeth frowns. “ _Thalia_?”

“Nice of you to answer,” Thalia says, coolly. She throws another rock: it hits the side of the window, barely a few inches from the frame. Annabeth doesn’t think it’s accidental.

She doesn’t get it for a few moments, before suddenly she realises. Her eyes widen. “Oh, God.”

“Uh-huh.” Another rock. “I called you.”

Annabeth glances at her phone, still turned off, but also face-down on her dresser, like she’s been leaving it most nights, simply letting Piper’s customary text silently flit in to be read the next morning. Crap.

“It was switched off,” she says pathetically.

Thalia scowls. “Yeah, I got that.” Another rock. This one directly hits the frame, and bounces sideways into her room, landing with a clatter on the floor. Annabeth stoops, picks it up, and clenches her fist around it, feeling the edges cut into her palm.

“I’m so sorry, Thalia,” Annabeth says, “I—”

But she’s run out of lies, so all she can do is just stare at her helplessly. Thalia holds her gaze for a few long moments, before she sighs, drops the rest of the pebbles, and then turns to leave. For a heart-stopping moment Annabeth thinks that she has really messed up this time, and Thalia’s leaving, until, at the very end of the garden, she half-turns, and raises an eyebrow expectantly. “Well?”

Annabeth needs no prompting. She flies out of bed to retrieve her jacket, quickly glancing in the mirror at her current outfit – an old periodic table shirt from her dad, and a pair of plaid pants – should be fine – before shrugging on her coat, sliding her feet into her trainers, and then slips out of the window. By the time she lands in the grass, the dew stinging her exposed ankles, Thalia is out of the gate, holding it open for her, and Annabeth hurries over, tucking her cold hands into her pockets.

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

Thalia just rolls her eyes, and produces a McDonalds bag from the confines of her jacket. “Here.”

Annabeth takes it hesitantly. “Without salt?”

“Duh.”

“Where’s Piper?”

“She’s staying the night with Bookstore Boy.”

“Oh.”

Thalia catches her line of thinking. “Not for that. They’re watching the stars, or some shit.”

“That’s romantic.”

“Whatever.”

It’s the closest she’s gonna get to forgiveness right now, so Annabeth takes it.

They end up in a children’s jungle gym ten minutes away from the station. In the night, if she concentrates, Annabeth can hear the trains pulling in and out. She hasn’t been to this park in years, since she was around eight or nine, but Thalia evidently has, with the ease she scales the fence and then the monkey bars, sitting on top of them with the air of someone who has done this before. Not that Annabeth is particularly surprised: if there was any place someone like Thalia was going to romp around in the middle of the night it would probably be somewhere like this. She puts the McDonalds bag between her teeth and climbs up as well, the cold metal pinching at her skin. She’ll wake up with blisters on her hands tomorrow, but she can’t find it in herself to care.

She pulls herself up, perching on one of the bars, letting her legs hang over the edges, and then hands Thalia the bag as she blows on her hands. Thalia gladly digs in, shoving a handful of fries in her mouth, before rootling around in the pocket of her jacket and pulling out what looks like a baggie of weed.

“Remember the midnight rule,” Annabeth reminds. She’s only half-serious.

Thalia flashes her phone at her. “It’s not midnight yet.”

“Close enough.”

“Whatever.” Thalia rolls her joint, not looking at her. Annabeth watches her.

“I’m really sorry,” she says, quietly. She fits her nail into the scar. It is still flushed from where she burned it earlier. “For ditching you. I—things just came up, at home. And I know that’s not an excuse, I just—” Her throat closes.

There’s a long moment before Thalia speaks, and when she does she just sounds tired. “Are you ever gonna tell us what’s going on with you?”

“What do you mean?”

Thalia glances at her. “You think we don’t notice?”

Annabeth’s throat feels thick. She can’t speak. “It—it’s not a big deal.”

“It is to us.”

She should tell her. She should tell her right now, about her mom, and her family, and her crippling fear of meaning nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. She should tell her how it scares her so much she hasn’t slept more than four hours a night for the past three months, how sometimes she feels like she can’t get out of bed, and how her attendance and schoolwork and now even her friendships are all suffering because of it. It’s not particularly shameful, or difficult, but her throat has closed, and she opens her mouth, and nothing comes out. She feels choked.

“Sorry,” she manages, finally. Thalia sighs, but resigned, like she’d expected it.

“Don’t be sorry,” she says, and digs her lighter out of her pocket. “Just—tell us, yeah? We’re your friends.”

“I know.” Thalia doesn’t respond, so she says, urgent, “You have to know that I know that, Thalia.”

“I do. But—” She exhales. “Don’t lie to us. Okay?”

“Today was just a bad day.”

“You’ve been having a lot of those.”

“I can’t,” Annabeth says.

And finally, Thalia seems to get it. She glances at her, holds her gaze for a few moments, before she rolls her eyes. “Oh, come here, you mug.” She lifts her arm and Annabeth obediently snuggles in closer, resting a head on her shoulder, finally feeling the tension leave her body. “I’m not mad.”

“I know,” Annabeth tells her neck mournfully. “I’m just a terrible friend.”

“Don’t fish.”

“I’m not, I’m acknowledging. Not my fault you just want to compliment me all the time.”

Thalia digs her cold fingers against the exposed skin of her neck, and Annabeth squeals a little. “Don’t be cheeky,” she says. “Here, pass me a fry.”

Annabeth feeds her one as Thalia lights the joint, and then helps herself to a chicken nugget as Thalia takes a deep drag.

“Jeez,” Thalia says, afterwards. “I always forget how miserable your McDonalds order is.”

“Not liking salt is valid.”

“For Mormons, maybe. Did I remember barbecue sauce?”

“No.”

“Damn. Always something. Another fry.”

“ _Please_ ,” Annabeth says, but passes her two. Her relief is probably palpable. They are okay. Thalia has forgiven her. No thanks to her, though.

For a few moments, they just sit in silence, legs swinging beneath them. Annabeth loves Piper but there’s something so undemanding about Thalia’s presence, so unexpectant: she knows that Thalia would be more than happy to just sit here in silence for the rest of the night, doing nothing but picking at the food and slowly burning her way through the joint. Annabeth privately loves this sort of effortless company: simply existing with each other.

Still, though: “Is everything okay?” she says, quietly. Thalia is a weirdo and this isn’t the first time she’s coerced her out of her bedroom for an impromptu midnight rendezvous, but she still senses that maybe tonight isn’t all about her company.

There’s a length beat, as Thalia takes a drag, and then exhales, but finally she says, “My mom came home last night.”

“Is she okay?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t exactly stick around for a chat.” Thalia makes a sort of reluctantly impressed sound. “Sneaky bitch, that one, she came in when I was at school, must’ve known I wouldn’t have let her in otherwise.”

“Where’s she now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, mentally?”

“Who the hell knows. Probably outer space.”

“And physically?”

“Crashed in one of the spare rooms. I just had to get out of there for a bit before I dealt with that nightmare in the morning, when she wakes up and becomes lucid. Thought I’d at least try delaying it.”

Annabeth glances at her, offers her a wry smile. “I’m okay with being a delay.”

“Yeah, multiple hours late,” Thalia says, but she nudges her back, and gives her a smile. “Thanks, though. Seriously.”

“Anytime. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do.”

There is a pause.

“Life is weird,” Thalia decides, finally, and Annabeth snorts.

“You’re telling me.”

“If you were God for a day, what would you change? I’d zap my mom out of existence.”

“End world hunger,” Annabeth says, half to be a dick.

Predictably, Thalia scrunches up her face. “Don’t be noble. Who’d you zap?”

“You.”

“I’m still on the fence about forgiving you, you can’t say stuff like that yet. Be honest.”

Annabeth takes another fry. “Maybe my mom, too.”

This is the only place she trusts enough to say it, and it’s mainly because Thalia isn’t wholly sober. Just as she hoped, Thalia doesn’t press, just nods, and nudges their shoulders. “I’ll toast you to that.”

“You know,” Annabeth says, “somewhere out there, there’s a planet where they’re both gone.” Thalia hums to show that she’s listening. “You know alternate universes?”

“Theoretically, I guess. Are you gonna science me?”

“A little. If the universe is infinite then that means everything that can possibly ever happen happens, because what’s probability when it goes on forever? Which means there are probably millions and millions of other Earths out there, enough of them that there are probably Annabeths and Thalias out there sitting in a jungle gym just like this except—except Thalia’s a ginger.”

“Sounds miserable,” Thalia says, but her expression is thoughtful. There’s a pause. “I like that idea.”

“You do?”

“Don’t you?”

“Doesn’t it make you feel—I don’t know, sad?”

“Sad?” Thalia scoffs like Annabeth’s just said something truly absurd. “Why would I be sad?”

“Knowing there is so much out there we’ll never know. I mean, comparatively we’re just a speck of dust to the universe. It doesn’t care about us.”

“Yeah, but isn’t there something kind of liberating about that?”

Annabeth has never thought about it like that. “Liberating?”

“We can do whatever the hell we want, Annabeth. In the grand scheme of things, who cares if I like girls, or... smoke weed, or whatever? Can you imagine how stressful it would be if we mattered that much? What matters to me is you guys. I think that it’s pretty rad that we’re just a particle of dust.”

“How philosophical of you,” Annabeth says, but her mind is spinning.

“Come on, lay down with me.”

Annabeth opens her mouth to protest, but before she can Thalia has taken her by the shoulders and is forcing her backwards, so they’re lying down on top of the monkey bars side by side. Annabeth feels the bars press into her body uncomfortably, one directly under her skull, another by her shoulder blades, and her hips, her knees, but Thalia sighs contentedly as though it’s memory foam.

“What are we doing?” Annabeth says.

“Being existential,” Thalia says, and takes another drag of her joint as if to emphasise. “Come on, look at the stars with me.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes, but she does anyway. It’s an uncharacteristically clear night, the sky just wide and deep and dark, but she can only make out a few stars, clustered in a clump near the horizon. She’s never thought of the endlessness of the universe as liberating, or whatever, and staring up into it, into its murky depths, like staring down into an ocean, still makes her feel so afraid that for a moment she loses her breath, as she thinks of Graham’s number and how it is but a fraction of magnitude of its size and yet it is still beyond human comprehension. But then she looks at the clump of stars and something in her chest shudders a little, and she tells herself to exhale.

“You know what I think, Annabeth?” Thalia says, into the silence. “I think life is too short to worry about things like moms and the universe.”

_It’s easy for you to say_ , Annabeth wants to tell her, but she doesn’t, because she knows it’s not.

“I say,” Thalia continues, “that we just do whatever the hell we like. Seize the day. Carpe diem, right? The universe can suck it. I say, if it doesn’t care about us, we shouldn’t care about it.” She reaches up, flips the sky off with both hands, her joint between her lips. “Hear that, you piece of crap?”

Annabeth lets out a breathless laugh. She still feels like there is something sitting on her chest, something crushing and pressing, but having Thalia next to her, warm and loose-limbed from the weed, laughing so fearlessly into the face of infinity, eases something in her, even just a little. She tells herself to breathe once, twice, and properly lets herself look at the sky, thinks about how they are specks on a rock hurtling through space and she is staring out into an abyss and how it still terrifies her but if Thalia can find something comforting in it then maybe she can try, too.

Unbidden, her mind for some reason goes to her locker mate, who is thoughtful to leave a note and a piece of candy for her every morning. She thinks maybe it’s a problem that she become so used to this unknown presence in her life that she doesn’t feel like her day has properly started until she opens her locker. She thinks how he so easily accepted her fear of infinity, how he leaves his textbooks behind and gets in trouble, and she thinks of how big and beautiful and frightening the universe is.

The next morning, she leaves him a note.

_You can borrow mine, if you would like._

*

_Really?_

_If they return even slightly damaged I will end you._

_Scout’s honour, I will protect them with my life._ Update from after _: dude, thank you so much! Also, you are a genius. I had a flick through – carefully, don’t worry – and JEEZ. Don’t even know what half of the words are. I left you an apple ring-pop as a thank-you._

_We’ve graduated to ring pops now?_

_I recognised that you handing over your textbooks was probably the equivalent of third base. Pretty sure we’re now married in some countries. Also considering it’s gone – have I finally found a flavour you’re not conveniently allergic to?_

_I threw it away._

_May as well have punched me in the face :D I’ll find a flavour you like eventually._

_You think I’m the kind of girl to settle for a ring-pop?_

_Two ring-pops._

_It’s a little concerning where you’re getting these from._

_What can I say I’m a ~~connoseer conosure connosuer connoseur connoseuir~~ master of ring-pops._

_Connoisseur._

_DUDE. That doesn’t even look like a real word anymore._

_I actually had to Google it._

_Omg. Look who’s no longer Einstein._

_You couldn’t spell it either._

_Sympathy trump card: dyslexia._

_Me too. You’re not special._

_Woah, seriously? And you’re doing all this insane stuff in Math? You’re showing me up, 167._

_Naturally superior._

_Of course. Should have known, as the only person to inhabit a locker in the science department._

_Don’t make fun of me! I was being resourceful._

_Yeah, duh, you ended up talking to me._

*

The last day of school before winter break, Malcolm comes home.

He arrives the day Athena was meant to and a day before he said he would, so when Annabeth comes downstairs in the morning she’s surprised to find him in the kitchen peering through the fridge.

“Malcolm?” she says.

He turns, and smiles. “Hey, Beth.”

They are not a touchy family, Annabeth can only recall ever hugging the twins a few times, and her parents even less so, but today she can’t help it and steps up to wrap her arms around him. “I am so glad you’re home,” she says, into his shoulder.

His laughter is wry. “That doesn’t sound promising.” When she pulls back, his expression is troubled. “Is everything okay?”

She shakes her head. “It is what it is,” she says simply. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He still looks bothered, but he runs a hand through her hair. “It’s good to be back.”

Piper and Thalia are both appropriately pleased about this information: Piper proclaims that he’s hot and Thalia says, “Now we can have someone around who can legally buy alcohol”, which is nothing short of what Annabeth expected them both to say. They both must understand what it means to her to have him back, though, because both their hugs are a little longer and tighter than normal, and Annabeth can only smile helplessly at them when she pulls back. She never says much about her home life, she hates talking about it, and in the face of a situation like Thalia’s, whose mom shows up once in a blue moon and usually only to ask for money, it feels juvenile and pathetic, but she knows they know some of it: Piper was there the first time Athena left, and Thalia joined shortly before the first time she came back. Having her brother come back from college feels like one small aspect of normalcy she can regain as both her parents dance closer and closer to separation. They’re like a Newton’s cradle in reverse, swinging away further and further each time, until one day they’ll pull so hard the strings keeping them together will snap and they’ll fly away forever.

The last day of school is pretty much a dud, just a day of teachers setting holiday homework and explaining the upcoming syllabus, so Annabeth sort of just drifts passively between classes, not really paying attention. Her dad keeps his sleeping pills in the uppermost shelf in the bathroom cabinet, so last night she’d filched one: it had worked, and she’d slept over four hours for the first time in months, but she’d woken up sluggish and unable to properly feel her fingers. It takes every last ounce of energy in her to drag herself between classes, and at lunch she drinks three cups of coffee to wake up her up.

Her only saving grace is that she’s apparently not the only one feeling the last-day slug. Thalia naps through Chemistry and at lunch swallows probably too many caffeine pills that renders her briefly catatonic for about ten minutes.

“She’s going to die by thirty,” Piper says, as they watch her do laps around the field. Annabeth doesn’t think she’s ever seen Thalia willingly run before. “I can’t even say what from, either.”

“Either that or she’ll achieve immortality,” Annabeth says, because if anyone would, it would be Thalia, entirely on accident, probably through a mixture of weed, bad life choices and smudgy eye makeup.

Piper hums. “That’s also entirely plausible,” she says, and then: “Oh, crap, she’s trying to climb a tree, come on.”

All in all, it’s a pretty useless day, and by the end Annabeth is determined to go home and sleep for a hundred years. Before she can leave, though, she has to quickly make a detour to her locker to retrieve her books for the holidays, which she hasn’t been to all day, considering most of her lessons were half-hearted Christmas parties. Her mind has been so preoccupied with her parents and Malcolm that she completely forgets about her locker-mate, until she opens it and a sheet flutters out.

She stoops to pick it up.

_Happy holidays, Locker 167. Have a good Christmas._

It makes her smile, for the first time all day.

_You, too._

*

Winter break is a quiet, suffocating affair.

Athena arrives two days late, in her work clothes, with a suitcase that is only half-filled. They have dinner, the six of them, for the first time in what likes forever, but for a table full of people it’s never been more subdued. Bobby and Matthew chatter on about their days but no one indulges them, because that’s usually Annabeth’s job and she’s just tired now. Athena asks Malcolm about school. He tells them all humorous, impersonal anecdotes. Typical, for a Chase dinner.

Malcolm’s staying in her bedroom because Athena is in the spare, so that night the two of them bring in the blow-up mattress and quietly make the bed, tucking in a coversheet and unrolling a duvet. He’s had a growth spurt since he went away, so when he lies down his feet stick out over the side.

“It’s gotten worse,” he says, as he watches Annabeth unfold his pillowcase. “Hasn’t it.”

It’s not really a question. “Yeah.”

He blows out a breath. “Do the boys know?”

“Not really. They just know that she doesn’t stay long.”

That this is the last time goes unsaid, but it is palpable. Athena’s never brought a suitcase before, and the last time they’d had pizza was when Malcolm was leaving to college, and Athena mentioned she would be moving out too. Malcolm just nods.

“How’s college?” Annabeth says.

He shrugs. “It’s college. Hard.”

He goes to Yale. Annabeth would like to resent him, sometimes. “I can imagine.”

“How’s school? Your friends?”

“Good. We’re good.”

“Anyone special, at the moment?”

Annabeth gives him a look.

“Just curious.”

“No one special.”

“Okay.”

She watches him test out the mattress, resting his head against the pillows. Quietly, she says, “You might see me reading in the night. Sorry if that disturbs you.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Just... helps me. If I can’t sleep.”

“Okay,” he says. “Me, too, sometimes.”

She glances at him. “Yeah?”

“Insomnia is a bit of a Chase thing,” he says, with a small smile, and Annabeth thinks of Frederick, in the basement, with his helicopters, and says, “Huh.”

*

It’s been hovering for a while, so when, at dinner, Athena announces that she and Frederick are getting divorced, Annabeth is not surprised.

Still doesn’t stop it from hitting her like a smack across the face.

She glances at Malcolm, whose face is impassive, and then at the twins, who are frowning at them, half-confused. They know what divorce means, they’re nine, but she supposes for them, who they all pretended for, it’s sort of registering like the development of a photo. The tears will come later, once it’s set in.

Athena’s expression doesn’t move but Frederick peers at all of them nervously, trying to gauge their reactions. “How do you feel about that?” he says, after a very long silence.

Honestly, Annabeth isn’t sure. The only thing she is sure of is that she doesn’t think she wants to be here. She stands. “I’m going to go to my room,” she says.

Malcolm glances at her. Sharply, Athena says, “Annabeth, we need to talk about this.”

“No, we don’t,” Annabeth says, and leaves before anyone can say anything further. The last thing she hears as she heads up the stairs out of earshot is Athena saying to Malcolm, “Can you speak to your sister, please?” She doesn’t stop, just heads straight to her bedroom, slides her feet into her discarded sneakers by the door, pulls a sweater over her head, and slips out of the window. The grass is a little crunchy underfoot, and even though it can’t be later than five the sky is already pitch black. She curls her hands into fists and lets her feet carry her away, moving on autopilot to the only place she can think of going.

By the time she reaches Piper’s, her teeth are chattering and she thinks her fingers have stiffened into place. They sting as she unfurls them to climb the tree by her window, and then again as she scrabbles at the frame to prise it open.

One thing that Annabeth still hasn’t gotten used to regarding Piper and Argo is the fact that Piper now has a surplus of friends other than herself and Thalia. For so long it’s just been the three of them that by the time Annabeth has one foot through Piper’s window and hears a decidedly male laugh from within the room she realises that Piper may not be alone.

She closes her eyes in frustration. Damn it.

She’s just considering the merits of trying to subtly slide back out of the window in the hopes that Piper hasn’t seen her yet, but then she hears, “Annabeth!” and realises she’s been caught. She freezes, guiltily, and then cranes her neck to peer inside.

Lying stomach-down on her bed is Piper and a boy Annabeth doesn’t recognise, though she has a strange niggling in the back of her head that says she should. There’s a laptop in front of them, paused. It doesn’t _look_ overtly romantic but this could have just been the leadup. Piper is definitely the sort of person to use movies as foreplay. God, if Annabeth cock-blocked her then she really is the worst friend ever.

She decides to try and gauge the situation. “Hello,” she says cautiously. 

“Hey!” Piper says, cheerfully enough. One con to her being an actor is that she has an excellent poker face. Annabeth can’t tell if she’s interrupted anything. She glances at the boy, who is smiling at her politely, a little confusedly, which she supposes she can’t blame him for her, considering she has a leg and a head through Piper’s bedroom window. His expression also belies nothing. Her gaze flicks back to Piper, who is still grinning at her.

Annabeth decides to just bite the bullet. “Am I intruding?”

Piper laughs. “No, this is just Percy. We’re just watching our sex scene, come join us!”

Right. Actors. That explains where Annabeth’s seen his face before. She slides the rest of the way in, lands in a pile of Piper’s laundry, and then hesitantly joins them on the bed. The screen is paused on a shot of Piper midway through lifting her shirt off, the boy next to her, Percy, helping her. Annabeth belatedly that she hasn’t introduced herself.

“Uh, Annabeth,” she says, and awkwardly holds out her hand.

Percy laughs, and accepts it. He’s got a firm handshake, which Annabeth immediately respects. “Percy. Good to meet you.”

“You, too,” she says. “We’re going to get very familiar with each other in a few moments.”

“Watching myself have simulated sex _is_ how I make my closest friends,” he agrees, and despite herself she laughs.

Though: “Didn’t you say your character had lesbian undertones?” she says to Piper. “Why is she having sex with a boy?”

“She does,” Piper says, “Percy’s just her heterosexual phase.” Then suddenly she freezes, and fixes Annabeth with wide eyes. “I mean—what? Lesbian undertones? Where did you—what?” She gives Percy a panicked look.

Percy just laughs. “I won’t tell.”

Piper visibly deflates. “Thank God. I’ve been good, I swear.”

“Clearly not that good,” Percy says, with a grin, and Piper shoves at him.

“Okay, I’m sorry Mr all-my-friends-are-on-the-show-too—”

“They are?” Annabeth says.

Percy glances at her with a small smile. “Yeah,” he says. “Chiron did a big casting call at Goode. A couple of us ending up landing the gig.”

“I tried to get Annabeth to audition,” Piper says, “but she’s a stick in the mud.”

“Also I can’t act,” Annabeth says.

“Contingencies,” Percy says, and Annabeth smiles at him a little.

Piper resumes the episode, and they fall into a silence as comfortable as silence can be when you are watching the two people you are currently in between having sex onscreen. It’s probably weirder in that it isn’t all that weird – Annabeth instead finds herself admiring Percy’s shoulders, and the fact that every kombucha shot Annabeth sympathy-choked down with Piper seemed to actually have done something to her waistline.

The scene progresses: clearly the characters’ first times, they fumble around, giggling, trying to figure out how to work everything. Over her head, Piper and Percy laugh quietly about certain moments, talking about how cold it was in the room, how Piper’s shirt snagged on her bra, and between them, Annabeth feels herself soften. She and Piper have been friends long enough that Piper must have sensed something was wrong; Annabeth doesn’t show up unannounced often. She’s grateful that Piper has just let her fade to the background, loosen on her bed, surrounded by quiet comfort in the way they are speaking to each other, not expecting much of her.

“This was the first scene we ever shot together,” Percy says. “That feels like so long ago.”

Annabeth hasn’t really been listening, just letting their voices fade to a comforting hum as she dozes against Piper’s shoulder, but that wakes her up a little. “Really?” she says.

Percy glances at her. His eyes are soft. “Yeah,” he says. “Hell of an ice-breaker.”

“I remember that,” Piper says. “Look, this bit—remember, we had to do this bit so many times?”

On-screen, Percy rolls them over, so Piper is now under him. They’re both giggly and a little awkward, Piper now in a bra. Her shoulders are hunched in: it could just be good acting, but with this new information, Annabeth suspects that maybe she was genuinely a little shy. It makes her smile, a little, just watching how Percy is so careful with how he touches her, always hesitating before he does, like he’s trying to maintain even a modicum of decorum as though they’re not both half-naked in front of each other.

“Oh, yeah,” Percy says, with a laugh. “We kept falling off.”

“I had bruises for so long. We were both so awkward,” she explains, to Annabeth. “We’d never done anything like this before, and it was our first day shooting.”

“Why would your director do that?”

“He said it was to build rapport,” Percy says. “Sort of worked.”

Annabeth glances at him. “It did?”

“Yeah. Broke the ice immediately. Then we could properly act like a couple after that because we’d already done the hard part.”

Annabeth thinks about this. She can almost picture it in her head: Piper, who is talkative when she’s nervous, and Percy, who she doesn’t know, but who has done nothing but be nice to her. They work well together. She’s glad Piper has someone like him to do these sorts of scenes with. “That was thoughtful of him.”

“We have a theory he’s half psychic,” Piper says.

“Or immortal,” Percy says. “He has these old eyes. I feel like he’s lived through a couple of centuries.”

“Dude, _yes_!”

Annabeth lets the conversation fade to nothing more than a background hum, content to just to lie there as Percy and Piper discuss the potential bygone eras their director has lived through. She closes her eyes and leans her head against Piper’s shoulder: her eyes are sore and burning, her throat a little thick, and the brightness of the screen against the dark of the room leaves red ghosts on the inside of her eyelids, flickering in static. It’s a pleasant enough distraction, but it doesn’t stop her mind from spinning, and her mouth goes a little sour just at the memory, of Athena’s carefully constructed blank face, Frederick, so afraid of any sort of confrontation, and she feels a fresh wave of tears fill her eyes. She presses them closed harder, prays that none of them fall. She hates crying in front of people but in front of a near-stranger, too? No way.

She doesn’t know how long she lies there, drifting, but she is jerked awake when she feels Piper gently nudge her shoulder. “Hey, sorry, Beth,” she says, “I just need to move.”

Bleary, Annabeth dutifully lifts her head off her shoulder, knuckling at her sore eyes, and watches as she climbs over Percy to get off the bed; the mattress rocks beneath her, and it’s almost enough to send her back to sleep. “Where are you going?” she says.

“Percy’s about to leave,” Piper says. “I’m just checking if Dad is still in the living room. He had a fancy meeting with a director and I don’t want to disturb him. Otherwise Percy can just climb out the window.”

Annabeth just lets out a quiet, “Oh,” and watches silently as Piper slips out of her bedroom door. Now it’s just her and Percy left alone on the bed. Normally, she’d be more aware of this: and maybe she is, she can still feel her mind fine-tuning to all the details between them, _I am alone with a_ _boy_ , how he is only a few inches from her, how if she reached over she could fit her finger into the dip in his throat that looks like it would be warm to the touch, but tonight she is too tired to properly do anything about it. She just reaches behind her for her phone in her back pocket that she hasn’t looked at since she left. She almost doesn’t want to, but she knows she should, so she flicks it on: she has three missed calls from Malcolm, and a text from Athena, _Come home now, we need to_ _talk_. She switches it off without responding.

“Everything okay?” says a voice, and she glances over to see Percy sat on the end of the bed, slipping his shoes on. He’s looking over his shoulder at her, his expression cautiously concerned. “You were looking at your phone like it was going to burst into flames.”

“Wish it would,” Annabeth says, and throws it behind her. “Just... drama. You know.”

“I get that,” Percy says, “being an actor, and stuff.”

Despite herself, it’s dumb enough for her to huff out a laugh. Percy looks pleased. “I’m sure you do.”

“I mean, Piper? Such a diva.”

“So much so,” Annabeth agrees. “Probably has a lot of unreasonable demands.”

“She can only work at certain temperatures. Otherwise the shoot must be cancelled.”

“Yeah?”

“Such a nightmare,” Percy says, with an eye-roll. He’s still smiling. She thinks that must be a perpetual state, or something. She likes it: wonders what it must be like. “I mean, you must know, being her friend.”

“You think I’m her friend? Common misconception, I’m actually her personal assistant.”

Percy throws back his head and laughs, so hard he drops the shoe he was tying the laces of and bends over, hands on his knees. Something in her twists a little at the sight of it: he has a really lovely laugh, and he does it with his entire body. How must it feel, she thinks wryly, to be so generous with happiness like this, where you can let it seep from every orifice and not worry that it will run out.

“Of course,” he says, once he’s stopped laughing, though not smiling: he hasn’t stopped smiling all evening. “I should’ve known. Silly me.”

Annabeth waves her hand. “Easy mistake. Piper has a habit of treating everyone like a personal assistant. Makes my job easy. You’ll start experiencing it, too. It starts with a coffee run, and then one day you find you’re carrying all her things. Slippery slope.”

“Can’t wait,” he says, and finally laces up his last sneaker. “Is there a PA’s anonymous I can join once it starts?”

“I’ll send you the address,” Annabeth says, “it grows pretty exponentially.”

“Looking forward to it.”

For a few moments, they both just smile at each other: and despite herself, Annabeth feels her heart start to beat a little faster in her chest. She’s honestly not sure how long they would stayed there, but after only a few seconds the door opens and Piper slips back in.

“Still going,” she says. “You’d think that they would have run out of things to say but apparently not.”

“Am I going out the window, then?” Percy says.

“Think of it as initiation. All my best friends have done it.” She steps forward, gives him a quick hug. “Thanks for coming ‘round, Perce.”

“Always,” he says, returning the hug. When they pull away, he meets Annabeth’s eyes over her shoulder, and gives her a small smile. “Nice meeting you, Annabeth.”

“You, too,” she says, risks giving him a smile in return. It’s worth it, for the way he grins.

Piper helps him out, lacing her fingers and giving him a boost. Annabeth’s eyes only snag a little on the flex of his biceps as he lifts himself up into the sill, and then accidentally meets his gaze when he turns around one final time to give them a wave. His face softens when their eyes meet, and his eyes go glitter-soft as he gives her a small smile, something private and gentle, before he slips through the window and into the night.

“He seems nice,” Annabeth says, into the silence. Piper turns to her, eyes bright.

“Yeah?” she says.

“I like him.”

Piper smiles at her. “I’m glad. He’s one of my best friends on set. Not a half bad kisser, either,” she adds, and Annabeth huffs out a small laugh. “I think he likes you, too.”

“You think?”

“You could do worse.”

They’re just teasing each other, but the thought of dating someone is sobering, and Annabeth falls quiet. What is she thinking? She doesn’t even know Percy. Entertaining the idea is nice enough, and maybe in one of the alternate Earths out there, in the one where Thalia is ginger, it could become a reality: but not in this one. This universe is not kind enough to do that; or maybe it is not cruel enough. The cruellest thing is to give her hope that she could ever have a boy like Percy, who doesn’t hoard happiness like gold, but gives it freely to near strangers like it is inexpensive.

Piper notices her change in mood, because her expression creases a little in concern, and she comes to the bed, dropping down next to her. “Hey,” she says quietly, “is everything okay?”

“My parents are getting divorced,” Annabeth says. Saying it aloud suddenly makes it so much more real, and she brings her hands up to her face to press the heels of her palms into her eyes, which have grown hot. Piper is stunned silent.

“Oh.”

“Can I just,” Annabeth says, “stay here, tonight?”

“Of course,” Piper says immediately, “of course.” Annabeth wishes nothing more than for her to go the bathroom, or something, so she can just cry in privacy, because she doesn’t think she can stop the tears from falling now, but she doesn’t: instead, she moves closer and wraps her in a tight hug, and Annabeth feels herself break a little, presses her nose into her shoulder and lets out the sob she’d been holding in all night. Piper’s arms tighten around her and she runs a hand through her hair and Annabeth is helpless against it, just collapses against her and cries: for herself, for her mom, her dad, her brothers, the shards of her family, the fact that she’s such a coward she couldn’t even be there for it. She thinks of all the times she had wished for them to legally separate so they could stop dancing along a thin line and hates herself for being so arrogant to think that she didn’t care.

She just pushes her head deeper into Piper’s neck and closes her eyes.

*

Athena leaves to New York on the first day back at school.

There was a snowfall the night before, so the driveway is blanketed in white. It is uncharacteristically unmarred: normally the twins would have burst out as soon as they woke up, school be damned, throwing snowballs and trudging their gumboots up and down the way, kicking up troughs and making snow angels, but they have been subdued, recently, and looking out at the sheets of untouched snow make something in Annabeth’s chest clench a little.

She knows that there’s no one really to blame. But knowing that this whole divorce has sucked out the last remaining life from the house makes her want to throw up.

The entire house has been dimmed, since the announcement. Chase family dinners are always a little off-kilter, always felt like they were only playing at being family instead of actually being one, but now they are bone-dry. Athena said that she’d stay over the new year but Annabeth thinks it would have been kinder to have simply left, because the rest of winter break was spent under a weird, quiet shroud. Annabeth spent New Year’s with Piper and Thalia in Thalia’s big house, just the three of them getting drunk in and watching New Girl reruns, but it still didn’t stop the gnat in her mind. The days between Christmas and New Year’s Day are meant to be exciting: this time, it felt like a funeral procession.

Athena’s flight is scheduled for mid-morning, an awkward time, so she’s going to be leaving while Annabeth and the twins are at school. Just Malcolm and Frederick will be home. They all awkwardly gather around the front door as Annabeth prepares to leave. She is sat on the last stair wrangling her feet into her sneakers, staring determinedly down at her laces so she doesn’t have to make eye contact with anyone else. Malcolm is further up the stairs, in pajamas, hair smushed to one side in a cowlick, and Frederick and Athena are crowded uncomfortably by the door, watching her. Annabeth’s still a little groggy from the sleeping pills, which she’s been needing more than ever – they’re running out, she’ll need to top them up somehow – so it takes her three tries to tie her shoes. The silence is prolonged. She just wants to disappear.

She stands up, shoulders her bag. She and Athena are almost the same height. Annabeth wonders if she’ll look like her when she grows older: can’t think if she’d love or loathe it.

For a few, tense moments, they are at a stalemate, waiting to see who will break: and then finally, Athena sighs. “Well,” she says. “Come here, then.”

Something deep and petty in Annabeth wants to simply push past her, out the door, leave without even so much as a goodbye, so Athena can know how it feels: but she can’t, because she knows she will hate herself if she does. Dutifully, she steps into Athena’s arms and they hug. They don’t hug a lot, she thinks she can count on one hand the number of times they have, so they are a little awkward and unsure, Athena’s arms coming around Annabeth’s shoulders like she’s not sure where else they should go. She smells of perfume, something spiced and flowery and fragrant; Annabeth feels a little numb.

They hold for ten seconds, then step back. Athena straightens her blouse where Annabeth managed to untuck it from the waist of her trousers. “Have a good day at school,” she says.

Annabeth simply nods.

“Maybe you can visit me in New York over spring break.”

Neither of them would want that. “Yeah, maybe.”

Athena nods, too, a little uncomfortably. “Goodbye, Annabeth.”

“Bye, Mom. Safe flight.”

And then she’s gone.

The train ride to school goes by in a rush. She normally sits in a window seat but she doesn’t this time, chooses an aisle seat, folds her legs up to her chest, heels snagging on the edge of the seat, so tightly it almost hurts, then buries her nose between her knees and just breathes. When she reaches her stop she unfolds and she can’t really feel her fingers or toes, though she’s not sure if that’s from the cold, the pills, or the position, so she runs her hand hard over the wall as she makes the walk from the station to school to regain some feeling. She doesn’t even realise that she’s grazed them until she pushes open the door and sees that she is bleeding.

_Shoot_ , she thinks belatedly, her mind still coming online. She thinks she has some band-aids in her locker, so she makes a detour there instead of the cafeteria where she, Thalia and Piper usually meet, pasting on a smile and saying hello to all her classmates she passes as they welcome her back. The science corridor is empty, save for a girl checking the bulletin board, so Annabeth just silently edges past her for her locker, and flings it open so hard that the piece of paper laying innocuously inside flies out like a trapped insect. She catches it just before it hits the ground, and unfolds it.

_Welcome back, locker bud!_

She blinks at it, and then looks back in her locker, where upon further inspection she uncovers a bag of sour gumdrops tucked away, taped up with a piece of masking tape that has a note scrawled on it in increasingly tinier letters, presumably so it can fit. On it, it reads: _Belated Christmas gift! As a thank-you for letting me borrow your locker and also your books. I had to cheat on your books with the prop books because you were gone. Don’t tell your textbooks, though it’s not like the prop books were worthy contenders, there weren’t any doodles in them. Felt pretty empty without the ghost of 167 floating around :^)_

It’s enough to prompt the first real smile out of her all day.

She fingers the gumdrops. He has no reason to do any of this – he doesn’t even know who she is. He had no way of knowing that Christmas break had been bad, just a stretch of unfeeling and excruciating dinners that she couldn’t escape from and probably an over-reliance on sleeping pills, and yet here he is, in her locker, with a kind note and bag of candy that’ll do something to pierce the numbness. She finds the band-aids, tapes up her grazed hands, and then puts a gumdrop in her mouth with fingers sticky from residue adhesive: it settles on her tongue, tart and sharp and sour, makes her screw up her face. But it’s something to feel, other than overwhelming apathy.

She tucks the gumdrops away with a small smile, and then heads off to the cafeteria.


	2. Chapter 2

_We’re not buds._

_Yes we are. I think I’m growing on you._

_Like a fungus._

_I actually laughed out loud at that. 167’s got jokes! Do you want to hear one of my classics?_

_Not particularly._

_Why did the sand blush? Because the sea weed!_

_Wow._

_I’ll get there one day. How was your break?_

_Okay._

_Get anything nice for Christmas?_

_I asked for a new locker. Santa didn’t deliver._

_You must have been a naughty girl then, 167._

_...Going to ignore that  
How was yours?_

_Pretty good. Hung out with my mom. I was working a bit, though, so not much of a break._

_Yeah, Piper mentioned that you guys were working overtime to get it done over the break._

_The grind never stops! Have to get out of your hair somehow, don’t I? You should be glad, it means I’m gonna be spending less time in your locker during the semester. Admit it, you’re a bit sad. Also, you know Piper?_

_She’s a friend._

_I was about to say small world and then I remembered that she attends Merriweather Prep too._

_Are you still in school?_

_Yeah, at Goode, down the road._

_Our opposition. I don’t know if I can keep talking to you now that I know you’re technically the enemy._

_You guessed it. I’m trying to infiltrate the sports teams by cracking down the only person in the entire school who has a locker in the science department. You got me._

_Okay, that was a strategic move._

_I know, we’ve been over this, you ended up talking to me, it was kismet, fate, I’ve drastically increased your quality of life, yadda yadda yadda._

_😒_ _No, because it means I don’t get trampled in the rush between periods. No one comes up here._

_And because you ended up talking to me. You can admit it._

_You’re somewhat entertaining._

_High praise._

_You still owe me a proper ring._

_Orange ring-pop._

_That’s not what I said._

_I’m playing a long game._

*

“Get me a caramel macchiato,” Thalia says. “Oh, wait, do I want a caramel macchiato?”

Annabeth sighs, tucking her phone between her ear and her shoulder as she rifles through her bag for her purse. “I’m literally up next, hurry up and pick an order.”

“Don’t rush me! I’m thinking. You know what, I don’t actually think I want a caramel macchiato.”

“Next!” the barista calls.

“Thalia, I’m about to order.”

“Give me time.”

“I don’t have time, I’m at the counter.” Annabeth pulls an apologetic face at the barista, who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. “Just pick something, or I’ll get you a cup of water.”

“Even you’re not that petty,” Thalia says, but she hums contemplatively. “You know what, I think I actually do want a caramel macchiato. Get me one. With whipped cream. Also can you get me some shortbread?”

“Bye, Thalia,” Annabeth says, and ends the call. To the barista: “Can I have a black coffee and a caramel macchiato, please?”

“Sure. That’ll be five twenty-five.”

Annabeth fumbles around in her purse for the money, and hands it over. The barista takes it like it is made of hot coals, pulling a distasteful face, and then tells her to wait at the end of the counter for her drinks to be made. Dutifully, Annabeth moves, still trying to cram her spare change back into purse, and has to pause against the wall and prop her bag up on her knee to free her hands. She’s so focused that she doesn’t notice a figure slipping next to her, so when a voice says, “Annabeth?” she drops her purse and her coins go skittering across the floor.

“Oh, shoot!” the person says, and they both dive down for the floor. When Annabeth glances up, she comes face to face with none other than Percy, crouched in front of her, trying to collect all her change before it rolls irretrievably under the counter.

“ _Percy_?” she says in surprise.

He glances up with an awkward, guilty smile on his face. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, it’s—” Annabeth catches a rolling coin flat under her palm like a fly, and when she back up he’s smiling. “Sorry. It’s okay. Hi.”

“Hi,” he says. “Uh, your money.”

They both stand. He is an inch taller than her. She would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about him at all since that night: her mind has been preoccupied with other more pressing issues, but Percy and his ceaseless smile was a nice sunny corner she would sometimes visit whenever her brain got too dark and she needed to air out the cobwebs. In the daytime, out of the smudge of Piper’s room, he is still just as bright. There’s something so effortless about him, so weirdly charming, in the fidgety way he stands, the tick upwards of his lips as he smiles at her, his frenetic energy that should make her feel anxious but instead makes her feel anticipatory, waiting for what he has to say.

She realises she has been staring when she comes out of her reverie to find him looking at her expectantly. “Sorry, what?”

“Oh, no, just your coins.”

“Oh,” she says, and lets him tip them into her palm. Their hands brush, he is warm.

“Sorry again,” he says, as he watches her put them into her purse. “I just saw you and thought I’d say hi. That was probably weird, I didn’t even know if you’d remember me.”

“Of course I do,” she says. “The newest addition to Piper’s entourage.”

He grins at that, sparkly. “Let me guess: you’re here on a spontaneous, unreasonably requested coffee run?”

“The sad thing is, I actually am,” she says. “Though not for Piper, for another friend.”

“Personal assistant to all. Your resume must be impressive.”

“Employee’s top choice.”

“Would expect nothing less.” He gives her a little nudge with his arm. He is so generous with touch, extending it to her even though they’re virtual strangers. She finds that she really likes it. “Do you come here often? I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other before.”

“Oh yeah, you’re at Goode, right?”

“Go Dolphins,” he says, with a dorky salute. “And you’re... Merriweather? With Piper?”

“The one and only.”

He gives her a look. “Rival schools. What people must think, seeing us together?”

“If they knew my real motives, probably something like, ‘wow, that Percy kid doesn’t even know what’s about to hit him’.”

“Your real motives?”

“What, you didn’t know I’m only befriending you to get information from the inside?”

He laughs. “Oh, yeah?”

“I’ve been orchestrating this all along. Piper’s room? I knew you were there the whole time.”

“How do you know that I’m not playing you, though?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe I knew _you’d_ be here,” he says. “Thought I could get you to divulge Merriweather secrets over coffee.”

“You think I’m that easy?”

“Are you?”

It’s sort of a risky game, to flirt like this. Truth be told, Annabeth isn’t sure if she wants to tug at this thread to see where it will lead. Well, that’s untrue, she is sure that if she allowed herself she could like Percy very much indeed. But she doesn’t know if she wants to: if she wants to let herself disappoint, or be disappointed, by another person, a person who is bright and sunny who will only be dampened by her. _What will you do_ , she thinks, as she gazes into his smiling face, _when I am empty and can’t move from bed for three days?_ He has so much to give, and she has virtually nothing in comparison. No, this will never work.

But it’s nice enough, to pass the time. “Depends,” she says.

“On what?”

“If the boy’s cute enough.”

“Yeah?” Percy’s properly smiling now, large enough that his eyes go all squinty, like green crescent moons. “And... hypothetically, if he looked like me?”

“Hypothetically?”

“The most hypothetical of hypotheticals.”

In one of the alternate universes out there, she could maybe do something about this, in the universe where Thalia is ginger and her parents are still together. But she’s not in that universe.

“I guess I’d consider it,” she says.

Percy grins, but before he can say anything one of the baristas behind the coffee machine calls, “Annabeth” and slides two takeaway cups across the counter. Annabeth sees her out of the corner of her eye do a double take at the sight of Percy, and it’s then that Annabeth realises that to her he may just be Percy from Piper’s room, but to a lot of people he’s Percy from Argo, and her heart sinks a little. She busies herself with properly shouldering her bag so she doesn’t have to meet Percy’s earnest, happy gaze, and slides the cups into coffee sleeves so she doesn’t burn her hands.

“I’d better go,” she says.

“The grind never stops for the personal assistant,” he says, and she barks out a surprised laugh. “Enjoy your drink, then. I’ll, uh... see you around?”

Oh, how she wishes. “Yeah, maybe.”

He becomes distracted when his own drink gets slid across the counter, and the barista with it, leaning in to shyly ask if he’s Percy from Argo and if she could maybe get a quick selfie, and Annabeth takes the diversion to quickly leave.

Like she could ever even entertain the idea of having someone as bright and beautiful as Percy. She takes a sip of her coffee even though it’s still scalding, and lets it burn her tongue.

*

Malcolm is halfway through packing his suitcase when Annabeth gets home.

She pauses in the doorway of her room for a few silent moments, as she watches him fold his shirts. He hasn’t noticed her yet. It takes her a few tries because her throat has suddenly closed up, but she manages to say, “What are you doing?”

He looks up. His face is tired. “Annabeth,” he says. Just her name.

“You’re leaving?” she says. “Now?”

“Are we gonna do this now?”

“The semester doesn’t start for three weeks. You can’t leave yet.”

“Can you blame me?”

No. Not really. “But... you can’t. We need you here. _I_ need you—”

He’s shaking his head even before she’s finished speaking. “Don’t say that.”

There’s a long pause. She can feel the migraine coming on again. “You’re being selfish.”

“And you’re being unfair.”

“How am I being unfair?”

“This isn’t just about you.”

“Since when have I ever made this about _me_?”

“You’re been grouchy and sullen and rude ever since Mom and Dad said they were getting divorced—”

“That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair is you guilt-tripping me to keep me at home,” Malcolm says, and she swallows, eyes wide. He notices, and sighs, and when he next speaks his voice is gentler, like he’s speaking to a skittish animal. “I can’t be here anymore, Annabeth. I’m going to suffocate. No one is happy here.”

She feels tears prickle at her eyes. “We don’t all have the privilege to just up and leave, Malcolm. Some of us have to stay here.”

“You’ve got less than a year, can’t you hold on?”

“What about Bobby and Matthew?”

“What about them?”

“They need you to stay here. I can’t—” She swallows. “I can’t look after them by myself. Please. I just—I need you, for a bit longer.”

“You’ve been looking after them for a long time,” he says, softly.

“You know that’s not the same.”

He sighs.

There is a long, long moment of silence. Annabeth grips her elbows so hard she’s surprised they don’t shatter in her hands. Malcolm just looks tired, sat on the edge of the blow-up mattress, surrounded by shirts.

“Can you just let me be selfish this time?”

She shrugs. “I don’t think my answer will really change anything.”

He smiles, wryly. It doesn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” And she does. If she were in his position, she thinks she’d do the same. She’s always been a bit of a hypocrite.

“It’s—it’s all gonna be okay, in a bit,” he says. “I know it sucks now but—I just can’t be here, right now. And I know that’s selfish but—I have to. You have to understand.”

“I do,” she says.

The smile he gives her is a little less damp. “Do you want to help me pack?”

“Not really,” she says, because she still hates him, just a little, but she comes in anyway, sits down on the mattress next to him. He is wearing socks that she thinks are Frederick’s. They must have gotten mixed up in the laundry: they are too stretched out to be his. They slip down his calves. He smiles at her, a little, and then hands her a pile of shirts that need folding. “Can I keep one?”

“Keep what?”

“A shirt.”

“If you want.”

She digs around in the pile for her favourite, a shapeless green one that sort of reminds her of Percy’s eyes. Then she pauses, and takes another. This one is nicer, grey, a button-up that Malcolm always leaves popped open at the collar whenever he wears it. He frowns when he sees it.

“Not that one.”

“I’m keeping this one,” she says.

“But it’s my best shirt.”

“Then you’ll have to come back for it.”

He looks at her for a long moment, gaze unreadable, before he sighs. “Fine.”

When he’s not looking, she also slides out one of his books, kicks it under her bed before he notices. She’s been needing something new to read at night, when she can’t sleep, and she’s spent enough nights lying awake, hearing him lie awake too, shuffling through the pages by the light of his phone, to know that it seems to work well enough for him.

Bonded through blood, bad parents and crippling insomnia. What a cocktail.

*

Her week only goes downhill from there.

Malcolm leaves in the evening, so for the first time in weeks she goes to bed alone. It shouldn’t be a huge deal, she’s always had her own room and it’s never been a problem, but something about having Malcolm lying next to her, also unable to fall asleep, was comforting in its company. And it’s not as though she was getting very much sleep anyway: but having someone who was going through the exact same thing as her, feeling as strangely untethered and as lost as her, was one of the things keeping her going. And now he’s gone, and she’s alone again, just creeping around a too-big house.

The twins become almost intolerable, too. She can’t blame them for that, it’s been a trying period for them all, but something angry and wicked inside of her wants to scream that this isn’t any different from before, that Athena’s been flitting in and out for years, started before they could even really comprehend otherwise, and she’s always been gone more than she’s been here. Her leaving now shouldn’t be any different from all the other times she’s left but for whatever reason it has made Bobby and Matthew menaces. They shout and snap and swear and don’t eat their food and leave their plates in the sink and don’t clean up after themselves, and Frederick is so passive he just lets them. Annabeth’s blood boils as she watches him quietly skulk into the kitchen to clean up their mess, to the point where the morning after Malcolm leaves, she watches Bobby and Matthew purposely get crumbs all over the floor, and all at once her resolve breaks. She snaps, “Can you be more careful?”

Matthew sneers at her. “Why should we listen to you? You’re not our mom.”

Annabeth almost breaks her fork in half. “In case you haven’t noticed, Mom isn’t here.”

“That’s your fault,” says Bobby, “cos you scared her away.”

It’s so mean of him that she horrifyingly feels her eyes begin to feel with tears, and she has to pinch herself to stop them from spilling over. No way will she give them the satisfaction. “Can you just shut up and eat your breakfast like a human being?”

“And can _you_ stop being such a bitch?” Bobby says.

“I’ll tell Dad you said that.”

“If you do that I’ll tell him you’re stealing his pills.”

She stares at him. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I saw you,” Bobby says, and then stands up. Matthew follows suit. “You’re being mean, I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“Good riddance,” Annabeth snaps, and then immediately regrets it when she sees the way that Matthew shrinks a little. She doesn’t say sorry, though, because she’s still simmering with anger and frustration, and she’d only managed to sleep for an hour last night so she feels completely dead on her feet. She just scowls down at her plate and waits until they’ve left the room before digging the heels of her palms into her eyes.

But then.

She gets to school, same as always. She manages to paste on a smile long enough to say hi to Thalia and Piper in the cafeteria, who are halfway through a game of Uno, and then heads to her locker. Her bad mood still permeates but what’s been carrying her all morning is the thought of what her locker-mate has left this time, a dorky little note and maybe some candy, too.

Only that’s not exactly what happens.

She opens her locker, and to her surprise finds it completely empty, save for a piece of folded up paper under the magnet. Something like dread festers in the pit of her stomach.

He’s never not brought her books back since he started. She prises the note free, and unfolds it.

_167 I am SO SO SORRY! I was using your notes during one of the scenes and then Grover accidentally spilled his grape juice all over them, I am honestly so so sorry!!! I tried to dry them and keep them from smudging as much as I could. I am so sorry!!!_

The pit turns into something of a chasm.

She’s turning on her heel and heading towards the reception before she can even think, her mind whirring. What could that possibly mean? He didn’t... he didn’t _ruin_ her notes, did he? No, she tells herself, of course he wouldn’t. He been nothing but good to her, he wouldn’t do something like this. Even at the beginning, before they started this strange friendship, he would never go that far: never purposely defacing her things. He wouldn’t do that.

Everything’s okay, she tells herself. It’s probably just a little spill, accidental: maybe a page is gone, she’ll just have to rewrite it later. All her books will be fine. She just needs to stop panicking.

She reaches the reception probably in record time. Despite her self-reassurances, there’s still something growing claws in her stomach, and it’s hooked into the flesh of her diaphragm and climbing upwards. She swallows hard, and pushes through the door.

Hestia looks up when she comes in, and Annabeth immediately knows from her face that it isn’t good. She doesn’t waste any time with pleasantries. “Are my books here?”

Hestia looks pained. “Annabeth...”

Her pulse quickens. “What? What happened?”

Reluctantly, Hestia reaches down, and produces a plastic shopping bag, bulging with books. Annabeth takes it like a loaded gun, unsure on why all her belongings are being handed to her like wet clothes, until she looks inside, and feels her stomach drop.

Her notebook – the notebook filled with months and months’ worth of notes, notes she’s spent hours pouring over late at night when she couldn’t sleep, notes that she _needs_ – has been completely ruined. The front cover is stained a deep purple, smells acrid and strongly of grapes, soft like mulch and tearing. She carefully peels it open, and her heart sinks into her toes. All her notes are smudged, blurred beyond recognition, the pages sodden with juice and hours’ worth of blue ink. They are curling at the edges as they attempt to dry, but it’s not like it would make much difference.

They are completely, completely ruined.

“I am so sorry, Annabeth,” Hestia says. “The boy was distraught bringing them here.”

Annabeth can’t speak. She thinks her hands are shaking. The last thing she really cares about right now is the _boy_.

“I didn’t have a proper look at them,” Hestia continues. “Is everything okay? I think most of your textbooks were unharmed.”

Mechanically, and with hands that don’t really feel like hers, Annabeth lifts the mess that is her notebook up. Thank God, the textbooks underneath are relatively untouched, some just a little damp from being in proximity to the notebook – but still.

“They’re okay,” she says.

“That’s good,” Hestia says. “He told me to say sorry.”

Sorry. Like that means anything. Annabeth realises she is still holding his note in one hand, and she clenches her fist.

Hestia peers at her. “Do you... want me to tell him anything?”

“No,” Annabeth says, “that’s quite all right.”

She turns and leaves before she can say anything else, the hand not holding the note almost strangling the plastic bag. She thinks she’s shaking. The bell is about to go and she knows she’ll be late if she doesn’t start heading towards her class but she can’t think about that now, she is moving on autopilot. She finds herself back in the science corridor, in front of her locker: she opens it, mechanically starts loading her textbooks back in it. Some are bone dry, some are a little damper, so she leans those against the radiator. Then she stares down at her notebook, ruined beyond repair, sodden all the way through, bleeding blue and purple water like blood, and feels her eyes prickle.

She rolls it up tightly in the plastic bag, and throws it in the trash. Then she unfolds his note, and prints a note of her own on the other side.

_~~SCREW YOU SCREW YOU SCREW YOU~~ Do you know how many months’ worth of notes is in that folder? Are you that arrogant that you think that just because you’re making money being a mediocre actor in some stupid web series that we can all just glide by like that? Some people actually have to work. _

Her hands are trembling as she does it, and she realises as she finishes the last word that so are the letters: her eyes are filling with tears, and she blinks hard, angrily, trying to get them to disappear. But they won’t, one treacherous tear slides down her cheek, so she scrubs at it, slams her locker closed, and rushes into the toilets before anyone can see her.

Only once she’s locked herself in a cubicle and sat on the edge of the grubby toilet seat does she allow herself to cry.

This _cannot_ be happening.

First, the divorce, then Malcolm leaving – and now _this_? She wants to scream. She has to physically curl her hands into tight fists, nails biting down into the skin of her palms, to stop herself from doing just that: and then, when that doesn’t work, she brings her legs up to her chest, feet on the edge of the toilet lid, fits her eye sockets into her knees hard enough until she sees stars. She imagines that she is falling into a black hole and watching as the galaxies around her blur into streaks. She imagines that she is anywhere else but here: imagines she is in the alternate universe where Thalia is ginger and her family is okay and she is stable enough to flirt with a boy like Percy because she is not afraid of what will come after because she does not view love and happiness as a non-renewable resource, where she gets eight hours of sleep a night and her brain works and she can text Piper back every night instead of ignoring her phone.

She is angry and upset and for a moment she almost punches the cubicle wall. She comes so close, she feels her hand curl into a fist, her muscles bunch as she pulls her arm back, but then she looks down and sees the ridges of her knuckles, thinks of how easily they’d shatter, and feels a little ill. She has to slide off the toilet seat and hunch over the bowl instead because she thinks she might throw up.

It doesn’t come, though. She just sits there, as the waves hit her, waiting to drown.

*

By the next day, her frustration and grievances have turned into anger. She’d been upset all of yesterday, come home with the mother of all migraines from suppressing tears all day, but she’d woken up this morning just irritated. She’d let some boy use her locker and borrow her textbooks, and then he was careless and ruined months of hard work. She’s furious he even got a tear out of her.

She scoffs as she reads the latest note. _I’m really, really sorry._ Please. He is not worth her time, and half-hearted apologies like this simply won’t cut it. For the first time in weeks, she doesn’t write back a response, or fold it in her pocket, just crumples it up and throws it probably too aggressively in the trash can.

“Jeez,” says a voice, and when she glances up she sees Piper and Thalia leaning against the locker next to hers. Piper is grinning at her. “Trouble in paradise?”

“What’d he do this time?” Thalia says, with a snigger. “Insult the binomial formula?”

Annabeth just rolls her eyes. “He spilled grape juice all over my notes.”

Their smirks drop off their faces.

“Wait, seriously?” Piper says. “Were they okay?”

“Completely ruined.”

“What a _dick_ ,” Thalia says, with feeling. “Sorry I ever called him lover-boy.”

Despite herself, Annabeth huffs out a laugh, and closes her locker. “Thanks.”

Piper’s face softens a little in sympathy, and she reaches out, takes her hand. “Are you okay? That must suck. You can borrow our notes if you want, to copy.”

Annabeth smiles at her, her throat a little thick with gratitude. She’s been a bit of a crap friend recently, she knows it, but here they are nonetheless, still offering kindness. “That would be nice,” she says.

Thalia sniffs imperiously. “You can’t copy mine, I worked hard on those.”

“I wouldn’t really want to,” Annabeth says, and Thalia flips her off.

“Screw you, I have great notes.”

“You don’t even know what the binomial formula _is_.”

“Is that going to better my life in any way? Didn’t think so.”

“Well, you can have mine any day,” Piper cuts in, “just let me know” and Annabeth squeezes her hand. She really doesn’t deserve friends like her. “Anyway, I actually have kind of exciting news for you.”

Annabeth raises her eyebrows. “For me?”

“Yep.” Piper looks all too smug. She should never be allowed access to information that other people don’t know about, she has far too good of a time lording it over their heads. Hearing her dangle details about Argo over Thalia’s head is only entertaining because it doesn’t concern Annabeth in the slightest, but now she’s curious. She waits expectantly, as Piper stands there grinning like a loon, clearly having far too much fun with this. “Do you want to know what it is?”

“Uh, yes?”

“Percy asked me for your number.”

That is not what she’s expecting at all. “Percy?”

Thalia glances between the two of them. “Who’s Percy?”

Something has crawled into Annabeth’s chest and made itself comfortable between her ribs, and she can’t discern whether it’s a good or bad feeling. “Well, what did you do?” she says, feeling strangely untethered.

“I gave it to him, obviously.” Piper peers at her. “Come on, I thought you’d be happy about this.”

“No, I am, I am, I just—” Annabeth’s head is spinning. Percy, bright, beautiful Percy, wanted her number. It could just be purely platonic, of course it could, but something in the back of mind just knows that it isn’t: that he likes her, or likes the idea of her anyway, and wants to get to know her better. Something breaks in the recesses of her chest at the thought, that she’s going to have to let him down. How can she ever possibly be good enough for someone like Percy? “No, really, thanks. That was nice of you.”

“Uh, hello?” Thalia says. “Who’s Percy?”

“Percy Jackson?” Piper says. “You know him, he’s on Argo with me. He plays my boyfriend.”

Thalia’s expression clears in realisation. “ _Right_. The beard.”

“He’s not a beard.”

“I just _know_ that your character is a lesbian, don’t lie to me.” Thalia tilts her head, thinking. “I guess he’s pretty cute. Is he after your hot ass, Chase?”

“Of course he is,” Piper says, sounding offended that she could possibly insinuate anything otherwise.

“He probably just needs a safe space to bitch about Piper,” Annabeth says, trying for levity, to clear the cavern in her chest. “We bonded over how much of a drama queen she was.”

“Uh, rude,” Piper says, and jabs at her in the ribs. “I’m being a good wing woman and hooking you up and this is how you repay me?”

Annabeth swats her away. “Okay, you don’t actually know he likes me.”

“Not this again,” Thalia says. “Jeez, you straight people are _exhausting_. I thought we were done with this sort of crap once Piper got her act together with Hot Bookstore Boy.”

“You know his name is Jason,” Piper says.

“He will always be Hot Bookstore Boy to me.”

Piper turns to Annabeth. “And of course he likes you, Annabeth, why else would he have asked for your number?”

“To be friendly?”

Piper’s ensuing eye-roll is so theatrical Annabeth is surprised they don’t roll right out of her head and onto the floor. “Okay,” she says, in a voice that says she’s merely indulging her. “Wait until he texts you, and then you’ll eat your hat.”

“I don’t have a hat.”

“I’ll buy you one for the occasion. A big one, with bows. Besides,” and this is punctuated with a hip bump that is a lot less delicate in practice then it probably was in theory, because Annabeth collides sort of noisily with the locker, “now that Locker Boy is absolutely out of the picture, Percy can be your rebound.”

Annabeth is the one rolling her eyes this time. “Locker Boy was never a plausible love interest in the first place.”

“I mean, I was sort of rooting for you,” Thalia says, with a shrug. “Not now, obviously, he’s a dick, and you have my angry lesbian Spotify playlist if you ever need to let out your hatred for men to deal with that, but I thought it was pretty cute. Also hilarious, because trust you to fall in love with a boy between your _textbooks_.”

“Whatever,” Annabeth says. “Don’t you have a class to be going to? Or not going to?”

Thalia just laughs merrily. “Don’t deny it! I know were secretly hoping for a love story like no other, you and your cute love notes.”

“No, really, Thalia,” Piper says, “I think you have Geography now.”

“Oh, shit, you’re right,” Thalia says. “Later, losers.”

They both watch her disappear down the stairwell, hearing an echoey curse as she presumably trips over something. Annabeth huffs out a laugh, and when she turns to Piper, she sees her still looking at the empty stairwell with an amused look on her face. “Oh, Thalia,” Piper says. “What will she do without us?”

“Probably world domination,” Annabeth says. “I think we keep her bloodlust somewhat restrained.”

“You’re right.” Piper looks at her, then, leaning against the locker. Her eyes are soft. “Hey, are you... sure you’re okay, with me giving Percy your number?”

“What? Yeah, of course.” Piper still looks unconvinced, so Annabeth takes her hand, squeezes it. “Piper, seriously. It’s okay. I just—was surprised.”

“Clearly you left an impression.”

Annabeth feigns humility and tosses a curl over her shoulder. “I always do.”

“Yeah, not in a good way,” Piper says, “normally they just think, _wow, what sized stick does she have up her ass_ —” and Annabeth digs her fingers into her ribs, where she knows she’s most ticklish. Predictably, Piper cracks up giggling, and tries to twist out of her grip. “Uncle, uncle! I was just kidding, you’re the most relaxed, un-uptight person I ever know—”

“Uptight!” Annabeth says, because that has some nerve considering it is coming from Piper, and she wrestles her into a headlock as Piper laughs, and for a few moments she forgets all about Percy and his smile and how much she wishes he won’t text her, just to save her from the pain of having to say no.

*

But he does.

 **[22:46] Unknown** : _Is this the Piper McLean PA help desk_

 **[22:47] Unknown** : _lol just kidding, I know it’s Annabeth haha. It’s Percy, I got your number off Piper, hope that’s okay :P I was just wondering if you maybe wanted to grab a coffee with me sometime? I still haven’t put my half of my evil usurping-Merriweather plan into fruition yet._

Her heart clenches reading it.

He’s just so earnest, is the thing, and it saddens her that she’s going to have to decline like this. She wonders what his face would look like. Would he be sad? Would his face shutter down, his smile falling off for the first time, or would he not care, has his fingers in so many other personable pies that her rejection will barely glance off him? She’s not sure what would hurt more. Maybe she doesn’t want to know, after all.

 **[22:51] Annabeth** : _Hi. I’m really busy at the moment, I don’t know if I can._

 **[22:51] Percy** : _Are you sure? I’ll even throw in a chocolate muffin for you_

 **[22:53] Annabeth** : _I’m not interested. Sorry._

 **[22:55] Percy** : _Oh_

 **[22:55] Percy** : _Oh right_

 **[22:56] Percy** : _I’m sorry, didn’t mean to bother you_

She switches off her phone with a sigh and rests her temple against the window. It’s for the best, she thinks to herself: but if that’s true, why does it hurt so much?

*

The next morning, Annabeth is in a foul mood: there are no breakfast bars left – there’s not much of anything left, she needs to do a grocery run – and then when she goes to reluctantly wash a bowl for cereal, she finds the sink is already cluttered full with the dishes from last night. It takes everything in her not to break something right then and there, so she just reads her head against the cupboard above the sink and tells herself to breathe deeply.

It only gets worse from there: she snaps at the twins so harshly that they both stare at her with wide damp eyes, looking a little scared, and Annabeth is too twisted up to have it in her to apologise. She just says coldly, “Wash your plates” and then stalks out of the house. Then, at school, after the customary hellos with Thalia and Piper in the cafeteria, Piper asks if Percy’s texted her yet.

“Who’s Percy again?” Thalia says, through a mouthful of fries.

“You’re aware it’s eight in the morning, don’t you?” Piper says to her.

“People eat hash browns for breakfast. This is basically the same thing.”

Piper gives Annabeth a wide-eyed, fondly exasperated look, like _get a load of that_ , and Annabeth manages a grimace back. All she can think about is Percy’s text from last night, the simple _oh_ in response. She’s tried not to think about it but she can’t help it, not now that the floodgates have opened. He sounded almost... disappointed. Though that couldn’t have been true.

“And Percy’s Annabeth’s potential beau,” Piper says, “keep up.” She turns her traitorous prying eyes on Annabeth. “Well?”

Annabeth takes a deliberate sip of her coffee. “What about him?”

“Did he text you? Because I actually did bring a hat for the occasion.”

Annabeth hesitates a little before she swallows, trying to buy time to come up with an excuse, but, by the looks on Piper and Thalia’s faces, it’s clear that they aren’t willing to sit around for her to fabricate a lie, so she just swallows and says, “No.”

“Damn it,” Piper says. “Boys. They all need a push in the right direction. Don’t worry, I’ve got your back, Beth. I’ll do some subtle encouraging today during filming.”

Annabeth manages a smile. It was the most paper-thin of lies, and as soon as Piper asks Percy about it she’s going to find out the truth, but she can’t bring it in herself to care. She can deal with the questions tomorrow. At least today she’s managed to buy some time.

The bell rings before they can say anything else, and they pick up their things and head to their respective classes. Annabeth practically floats through it in a daze, unable to properly process anything: she needs another coffee, and pronto, if she's going to make it to the end of the day without collapsing. During lunch, she texts Thalia and Piper a half-hearted lie about tutoring one of the freshmen and ducks out of school, heading towards the coffee shop.

She's so in a daze that she doesn't properly see where she's going, and when she turns to head through the door she suddenly bumps into a body directly in front of her, sending her phone clattering to the ground. She feels her eyes fill with tears, just so frustrated and fed up, and for a moment simply closes her eyes in defeat, letting out a shaky exhale. Today cannot get any worse.

Annabeth turns, and then suddenly bumps into a body directly behind her, sending her phone clattering to the ground. She feels her eyes fill with tears, just so frustrated and fed up, and for a moment simply closes her eyes in defeat, letting out a shaky exhale. Today cannot get any worse.

Apparently, the universe seems to take that as a challenge, because as she crouches down to pick up her phone, wincing at the damage – a shattered screen, damn it – she becomes aware of the person she bumped into doing the same, and then—“We really need to stop meeting like this.”

Oh, come on.

She reluctantly raises her gaze to see Percy awkwardly crouched in front of her, offering her a small smile. His eyes are a little hesitant, hopeful, and just far too earnest, so she quickly looks down at her phone. For those eyes, there is little she feels like she wouldn’t do: they make her almost want to split herself down the middle, spill her viscera over the floor.

“Percy,” she says. “Hi.”

“Hey.” His smile is so, so careful.

She has to look away before she starts blubbering like a baby, instead just scrubs hard at her eyes. “Hi,” she says again, clears her throat when it comes out thick. “I mean— Sorry, I just—”

Immediately, he says, “No, _I’m_ sorry, God, is your phone—”

They look down at it: her, sort of inanely. Cracks scuttle across the entire screen, and Percy lets out an appropriate wide-eyed wince.

“I am _so_ sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—I can pay for it, if you want—”

Annabeth just wants him to go away so she can sit and cry. “No, it’s fine,” she says, “it’s fine.”

“It’s broken.”

She stands, a little too quickly, feels her vision momentarily fuzz out, and clenches her hand tight around her battered phone. She feels the glass shards cut into her hand. “It’s fine,” she says again, “just—it’s fine, I can still use it.” She turns it on, just to show it can, and it flickers to life. The cracks fragment the smiling faces of Piper and Thalia, her lockscreen.

Percy glances down at it, then at her. His gaze is earnest and concerned.

She exhales, hard. “Sorry,” she says, finally. “Bad day.”

“Been there,” he says, sounding like he’s aiming for levity, and when she risks a glance up at him he’s giving her a wry smile. “I’m probably not helping, am I? Sorry, I should—”

Of course. Because the last time they spoke she turned him down. “Oh,” she says.

“I should go,” Percy says.

“No,” she says, “you— This is a public place.”

“It’s okay,” he says, “no hard feelings, right?” This isn’t right, it isn’t a genuine smile. She didn’t know he could do that. Did she do that?

“Of course not,” she says, “just—”

“Yeah?”

“I mean,” she says, “I didn’t mean—” Horrifyingly, she feels her eyes begin to prickle with tears. God, she has been crying so much. She is pathetic. She tries to blink them back but she is too late, she has been holding in too many recently and she is like a cloud over a valley, pregnant with rain, ready to pour, so she brings her hands to her forehead to fight off the impending headache, hide her eyes. “Sorry.”

She can’t look at him. Probably doesn’t need to, to know that he looks concerned. “Are you... are you okay?”

“Bad day,” she squeaks out again. Even she wouldn’t believe it. She takes in a hitching breath. “Sorry, just—”

She risks a glance at him, and his eyes are wide, uncomfortable. “Are you sure?” he says. “Do you... wanna talk about it?”

He sounds so awkward that despite herself, a wet laugh escapes her, and she feels a tear roll down her cheek. “You don’t have to sound so eager about it.”

“I’m sorry!” he protests, and she manages another laugh. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t really know what’s going on.”

Join the club, she thinks. “More like a bad week,” she admits.

His gaze is cautious. “We _can_... talk about it, if you want. My counsellor says that it’s probably really helpful.”

“You have a counsellor?”

“Sure,” he says simply. “We can maybe go to a park?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” she says. “I turned you down.”

He winces. “Trust me, I remember.”

“You don’t owe me kindness.”

“I broke your phone,” he says, “and you’re crying.”

“M’not crying.”

“You seem like maybe you could use an ear now.”

And she should say no. She didn’t turn him down because she didn’t like him, she turned him down because she _did_ , painfully so, and she didn’t want to let this beautiful, smiling boy into life when she could barely keep herself together most days. But his eyes are so earnest and his compassion feels almost unwarranted and even though she is sure the universe has never liked her very much, this feels a lot like a do-over. If she says no now, she will not get this again: she would be a fool to think kindness means compliance.

And she supposes she’s always been a little selfish.

“Okay,” she says quietly, and Percy’s returning small but so very beautiful.

They end up at a park a few minutes away from the café, Percy having bought them both coffees, and sit on a wooden bench on the very fringes of it, overlooking the grass. They are still climbing out of the claws of winter so it is relatively empty and a little grey, and when Annabeth exhales her breath forms coffee-flavoured clouds, but the sky is clear, and crocuses are beginning to peep their yellow heads out of the grass. There is one near her feet, and she toes at it; the petals unfurl, a tight dark bud revealing itself. Spring is coming. The air is damp with it.

“Do you ever feel like a bad person?” she says.

Percy takes a sip of coffee. “Sometimes.”

It’s not the answer she expected. “Really?”

“Did you think I’d say no?”

“You just seem so settled.”

Percy snorts. “You are the first person to have ever used that word about me.”

“I mean comfortable,” she says. “Like, in yourself.” He is not physically settled, she has noticed that he is never entirely still. There is something nice about it: it doesn’t register as anxiety on him, but more excitement. “I’m still trying to—get to that.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs, supremely uncomfortable. She hates talking about herself like this, it makes her feel like the flesh is being stripped from her bones, and she hates being viewed as weak. “Don’t know. Being a good person.”

“I think you’re a good person,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “You don’t really know me.”

“Well, you must be something of a saint if you can put up with Piper,” he says, and she huffs out a laugh. “No, really though. She clearly thinks so, if you’re friends.”

Annabeth turns her coffee cup in her hands. “I don’t know. It’s not that. It’s hard to explain.” She glances at him. “Why do you feel like a bad person?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes there are just days where you think—wow, as a fundamental human being, I kind of suck.”

“Because you do bad things?”

He sighs. “I guess so. Sometimes not, though.”

She thinks about this. “I don’t think you suck.”

He grins at her. “You don’t really know me, though.”

“Don’t throw my words back at me.”

“Sorry,” but he doesn’t sound sorry, so she just rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her coffee. He put too many sugars in it, she doesn’t normally like it this sweet, but it’s nice enough. “Is that—I don’t know, the crux of your bad week?”

She raises her eyebrows. “The crux?”

“Did I use it right?”

“The _crux_? What century are we living in?”

“Don’t feel threatened by my intellect,” he says, and it sort of startles a laugh out of her, a big booming one she doesn’t think she’s let out in a while, and Percy looks so pleased with himself that she has to turn away. “See?”

“That’s got nothing to do with your intellect.”

“Made you laugh, though.”

“Don’t get a big head. It’s not hard.”

“Not hard? Excuse me, you are most stone-faced of audiences. I will be living off this for the next week.”

“You’re so _weird_ ,” she says. “People must think you’re some handsome, elusive actor but you’re just weird.”

“Aw, you think I’m handsome and elusive?”

Her ears go pink. “I mean—objectively. Whatever.”

“Objectively,” he mimics. “You know how to flatter a boy, Annabeth Chase.”

She pauses, and then glances at him. “You know my full name?”

Percy suddenly looks like a deer in headlights. “Uh. No?”

“You just said Annabeth Chase.”

“Lucky guess?”

“How do you know my full name?”

Now it’s his turn to go a bit red. He blows out a breath. “Well,” he says, “I, uh—looked you up.”

“On the Internet?”

“Yes, Grandma, the Internet.”

She sits back, processing this. “Oh.” She supposes she’d known that Percy liked her at least a little, enough to want to get coffee with her, but—this is sort of shedding a new light on him. He looked her up. He probably went through Piper’s Instagram and found all the pictures with her in them.

He likes her.

“I’m sorry,” Percy says, “I realise that was—sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

He looks supremely uncomfortable. “Well, ‘cause—you. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Cause I what?”

“You turned me down.” Annabeth’s face must do something because he immediately hurries to add, “And that’s completely cool! I get it, I respect it, I’m sorry—”

“No, no, it’s—” She pauses, licks her lips. “I didn’t—realise.”

“Was me asking you out not a big enough hint?” he asks, a little dryly. “Because next time I can get a jumbotron.”

“Not—that. Kind of. It’s just—you don’t really know me.”

“Well, yeah.” He shrugs, a touch self-consciously. “I wanted to. That’s kind of what a first date’s for.”

“But—what if you don’t like what you find out?”

She can feel his eyes on him like a brand. “Is this more ‘bad week’ stuff?”

Annabeth keeps her eyes down. “It’s just—” The words stick in her throat, so she swallows, determined to make them come out. “You’re an actor. You’re—you. And I’m—me.”

“Astute,” he says, though his voice is gentle. “But you realise that, like—I know that?”

She sighs in frustration. “No, of course you do, it’s just—”

“No, as in, I know that you’re you. I know that you’re—you know, whatever you are.”

“Human.”

He gives her a rather impressive bitch-face, which she laughs at. “Thanks for the clarification.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s—” He sighs, a little thoughtfully. “I know a bit about you. And I thought it was—” He coughs, ears pink. “Kind of rad.”

She watches him, carefully. “But you might not think the rest is.”

“I doubt that.”

She’s shaking her head before he’s even finished speaking. “Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“That’s—it’s not fair. You don’t know that. You don’t know—what if I’m actually a really terrible person and you hate me? What if you find out I don’t recycle?”

“Everyone recycles.”

She exhales in frustration. “That’s not the _point_ , Percy, you just—” She closes her eyes, briefly. “You can’t promise stuff like that. You don’t know that you’re going to like everything you find out about me. It’s not fair.”

When she opens her eyes, Percy is watching her, carefully. “But you turned me down,” he says, softly. He sounds a little confused. Annabeth feels like her ribs are caving in on themselves. “You—so it doesn’t matter.”

He looked her up online. He asked her out for coffee – and then again, even after she said no. Fate has never been kind to her but she thinks this time, it has extended a mercy.

“Well,” she says, aiming for light, even though she sort of feels like she’s ripping herself apart, “maybe—I was wrong.”

Percy’s expression flickers. “If this—Annabeth, if this is just—”

“No, it’s not, it’s not, I’m sorry, I—” She looks down at her coffee cup, and then thinks she can be brave, and looks at him instead. “I mean it. Really.”

Percy’s expression is almost heartbreakingly hopeful. “Yeah?”

“I’ve never done this before,” she says. “I’ll probably be—garbage.”

“Me neither,” Percy says. “I mean, me too. Garbage, all the way around.”

“And, um.” She picks hard, at the plastic lid: only this time, when she feels it begin to slide under her nail, she releases, because if she can let Percy be kind to her, maybe she can start doing the same. “We’ll go slow.”

Percy lets out an obvious exhale of relief. “Yeah. Please.”

She has to laugh a little. “Why are you nervous?”

“I don’t know! Because—this is happening.”

He is really beautiful. “You’re cute,” she says.

“Don’t patronise me! I’m excited.”

“I’m not patronising you. You _are_ cute.”

“You’re cuter.”

She gives him a look. “We are not arguing about this.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you know I’ll win.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Sorry,” Percy says, though his excited grin says he’s really anything but. “Slow. You’re right.”

“This is weird, right?”

“A little. But also pretty awesome.”

She glances at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re excited.”

“Of course I’m excited,” he says, “a cute girl’s going on a date with me.”

“Okay, hold on,” she says, “we did not agree to a date.”

“Indirectly.”

“We said slow.”

“Friendship date.”

She gives him a look.

“What?” he protests. “I can do friendship date.”

“Really?”

“Okay, no,” he allows, “and the sexual tension between us will probably be off the hook, but—”

“Oh, God, you really just said that.”

The look he gives her is far too smug. “Yeah, but it’s okay, because you think I’m cute.”

“I don’t—” she starts, but then she sees the smile on his face, and her protests die on her tongue. “Maybe a little.”

“For the record,” he says, “I think you’re cute too.”

“Don’t sweet-talk me,” she mumbles into her coffee. “It’s not attractive.”

“I’m always attractive.”

“Are you always this insufferable?”

“Just around cute girls,” he says, and she has to smile at that. “Sorry. I just—I’m excited.”

“Slow,” she reminds, but mainly for herself, because her heart has started pounding.

Percy is nodding. “Of course, of course, yeah. Slow.” He looks like he’s fighting the urge to get up and dance. “How about... friends first?”

“Yeah?”

“So then there’s—none of this commitment, you know? A test run. We get to know each other and decide if we hate each other. Like, if I find out that you don’t recycle. Or you like the Red Sox.”

“You don’t like the Red Sox?”

Percy gives her a look. “Annabeth.”

“Joking.”

“You’re aware that would have been a deal breaker, right?”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“Actor.”

Annabeth turns her head to hide her smile. He is so stupid. “Friends sounds good,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He holds out his hand. “Come on, pinkie promise.”

“We’re not ten.”

“Pinkie promise! It seals the deal.”

She rolls her eyes, but links their pinkies together. His hand is warm from where it’s been wrapped around his coffee, and she wonders what it would be like to properly link all their fingers together. For the first time in a while, something winged like hope takes off in her chest. “Weirdo,” she says. “Is the deal sealed?”

“I think so,” he says, and squeezes, just a little, before they let go. “Are you... feeling a little bit better?”

Annabeth had completely forgotten about her sour mood. She looks down at her broken phone in one hand, and everything comes back: Malcolm, the twins, her ruined notes. Just the reminder of it plucks at a thread of irritability deep in the recesses of her chest, but it is dulled now, lessened by the veneer of her afternoon with Percy. “I am, actually,” she says. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he says, and he sounds like he means it, too. “I should be going.”

“Yeah, of course—”

“Got a project I need to finish,” he says. “Would rather be hanging with you, though.”

She feels her ears go hot. “I thought we were doing friendship.”

“I meant it platonically,” Percy says, a little smugly. “Not my fault you took it the other way.”

Sweet things have always sounded romantic to Annabeth, especially when coming so genuinely from a boy like Percy. She rolls her eyes. “Whatever,” she says. “Have fun.”

“I will,” he says. He stands, and then belatedly she does too. “I’ll, uh... text you?”

“Yeah,” she says. “That would be nice.”

“Cool.” He’s smiling. She thinks she is, too. She doesn’t know if she can stop.

“Cool.”

They just stand there, only inches between them. Percy’s hair looks soft: this close, she could probably count his eyelashes, and when he breathes, she can smell the coffee on his breath, sugary, just like hers. There is a flutter in her stomach and she realises that it is excitement. She can’t remember the last time she has been excited in a while.

“See you around, then,” Percy says, finally. He doesn’t look like he wants to leave, either.

“Yeah, see you.”

For a few moments, they stand there, looking at each other, until after what feels like years Percy lets out a puff of air and takes a step backwards, and Annabeth suddenly feels like she can breathe. “Okay,” he says, half to himself, and then nods at her with a small smile that lights her up on the inside, before turning away. She watches him leave, and as he does a little shimmy to himself and then almost trips over a pinecone something like elation fills her chest.

Infinity scares her, but out of the millions and millions of alternate Earths out there, she is in the one where she likes a boy who likes her back. She smiles.

It is a good feeling to know that for what feels like the first time, the universe is on her side.

*

There is a note in her locker the next morning.

There hasn’t been a note in a while: since the half-hearted apology, she’s pretty sure. Annabeth would never admit it, but she’s missed her locker-mate a little, and seeing a folded piece of paper on top of her books has her heart skip a beat in her chest. She reaches for it, but then something else catches her eye, and she pauses: an unfamiliar notebook, tucked in with the rest of her things.

She frowns.

He has left many textbooks, but never a notebook.

She glances at the note, and then pulls the notebook out instead.

Inside the front cover is scribed _property of locker 167_ , but she can’t pay attention to that, because on the page opposite are lines and lines are blue ink, written in an unfamiliar scrawl. She flicks to the next page, and the next, and the next, and each one is filled with writing, each in the same hand, sometimes changing between colours, with sloppily-done diagrams and wrinkled, faintly purple worksheets that have been glued in like they will run away if they aren’t.

At first, she can’t properly comprehend what she’s seeing. He... left his notes behind? This handwriting certainly doesn’t belong to her. Then she looks closer and starts recognising key words, formulas, diagrams, starts recognising her own handwriting on some of the worksheets, and something clicks in her mind.

He _rewrote her notes_.

Trembling, she flips through the pages – so many pages, how long did this _take_ him – something almost hysterical filling her chest with every double spread that is revealed. He must have found her notebook in the trash when she threw it away and salvaged it.

She doesn’t even know what to think. She is rendered genuinely speechless.

This almost complete stranger, someone she wouldn’t even recognise on the street, voluntarily spent hours of his free time copying out her notes for her, when he very easily could have not, and entirely without consequence. She doesn’t know who he is, he doesn’t know who she is.

What she does know is that this is the single most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for her. She traces one of the diagrams he’s done, and then glances at the note still lurking in her locker.

Mechanically, she reaches for it, and unfolds it.

_I tried to salvage all I could. I’m not very good at school so I had to get my friend Grover to fact-check a lot of this because your ink was all smudged and I wasn’t sure what some of the words were, but I did what I could. I think this was everything. I’m really, really sorry, 167. Hope this helped a little. x_

She doesn’t know what to think.

She looks back down at the notebook in her hand, at the hours of effort he put into making her life a little easier. Then, carefully, she tears a sheet out of the back.

_I don’t know what to say._

The next morning, there’s a response.

_I’m taking that as a good thing?_

_This is the nicest thing someone has ever done for me._

_It’s the least I could do._

Annabeth fingers the note, her mind whirring. She needs to do something for him in return, thank him in any way she can so he knows just how thoughtful it was of him. _Think, think_. What she can possibly do for him? She doesn’t know him. She supposes maybe she could leave him some candy like he’s done for her, but that doesn’t feel big enough: what’s a single jolly rancher when he rewrote her notes for a subject he doesn’t even like?

Then she has an idea.

When Annabeth was ten, Athena left for the first time, and instead of dinner Frederick came home that night with a book. Annabeth had always loved Math, always been good at it, but that book was the first time she’d ever properly discovered its use in space, saw how it could be applied, how it was used in the real world outside of architecture and proscenium arches, and she remembers being raptured for weeks as she read it cover to cover.

Looking back, she doesn’t think Frederick realised it was less of an encyclopaedia like he’d probably initially been expecting and more of a textbook – the answer bank at the back was a bit of a giveaway, as well as the example working-out on most pages – and for a ten-year-old, quantum physics was probably not considered ‘light reading’, but though she didn’t understand most of it, it was the single most fascinating thing she’d ever come into contact with.

She hasn’t touched it in years: mainly because she doesn’t care for quantum physics in the way ten-year-old Annabeth did, or thought she did, much prefers more solid Math, Math that doesn’t dissolve like sugar in water as soon as you leave the atmosphere, because from that book was borne her curiosity but also a crippling fear of insignificance and infinity that still plagues her today.

But she thinks she knows who could use it.

At the end of the school day, she slips it in her locker.

_So you don’t have to keep borrowing textbooks._

The next morning, it is gone, and in its place is a goofy little doodle, of a cartoon boy clutching a textbook to his chest with a smile on his face. Annabeth smiles just looking at it, and almost subconsciously her finger strokes the lines of the drawing, feeling the indents where his pencil pressed in.

So maybe he’s not half-bad.

*

Something changes, between the two of them.

As opposed to before, where Annabeth would only respond occasionally, and solely because he goaded her into doing so ( _You don’t write your name on the insides of your textbooks? Are you asking to lose them?_ ), and their conversations would be nothing more than surface-level jabs about him leaving crumbs in her locker, or her correcting the answer key in her Calculus textbook, they now talk every single day. It’s like a switch has been flipped: instead of just an annoying presence she had to tolerate, her locker-mate has weirdly become one of her closest confidants. She knows that most of it is due to the fact that the notes allow them to preserve at least an illusion of anonymity, so she doesn’t have to know who she’s talking to, doesn’t have an image to preserve because to him all she is is a locker, but she’s content to sit behind a smokescreen because it works. It’s one of the reasons she stoutly now refuses to watch the show: because she might see who’s using the locker, and have the illusion ruined.

She hadn’t planned on treating him like a walking diary, initially. After she gives him the textbook they fall back into their pattern of essentially him being annoying and her tolerating it, but then one day he mentions that the candy of the morning hadn’t come from catering but instead the sweetshop his mom works at, and Annabeth inquires after it. She does it mostly out of politeness, because it’s not the first time he’s mentioned his mom (and every time he does he draws little hearts around her name, which is admittedly adorable), but then his answer piques her interest.

_It’s the BEST. Free candy anytime, is not that not the sweetest deal? (pun unintended) No but she’s doing it on the side, she’s actually in publishing._

_Has she written anything?_

_Not yet, but she wants to. It’ll be pretty cool because then she can write a character based on me and make him devastatingly handsome. She’s only sort of recently started entertaining the idea, my old stepdad wasn’t super supportive of it._

_Why not?_

And so he tells her of Smelly Gabe, his mom’s ex-husband. The note is long, longer than usual, and wrinkled a lot, like he kept nervously folding and unfolding it, or like he crumpled it into a ball, wanting to throw it away. Up until now, it’s been easy to view him as an abstraction instead of an actual person, but reading over the note, understanding just how vulnerable it is, breaks her heart, a little. They’ve never talked to each other about deep things, it’s all been relatively light-hearted, but this admission feels like a step in the right direction, like he is extending a hand to something she can’t quite yet understand.

Still, she knows how big this must be for him: there are thumbprints either side of the page, smudged into the lines, like he held it in sweating hands. The note ends _sorry, that was probably a bit of a downer, lol, let’s talk about movies_ , and she smiles wryly at it.

_It’s okay. Thanks for telling me. That sounded really hard. I’m glad you’re okay.  
I don’t really watch a lot of movies. I can tell you heaps about war documentaries, though. Dad watches probably an unhealthy amount of those._

_Why am I not surprised? Also, you don’t watch movies? You should be careful saying that to an actor, you can give a guy a complex. Luckily, I do, so here’s a list of movies you should absolutely watch._

But from there, something shifts. They still talk about baseless, silly things – the crabby bus driver that morning, opinions on the latest Netflix flick, favourite fruit juice brand – but sometimes, he’ll slip a note saying _filming was sort of hard tonight_ , or she’ll slip one first, _my parents are getting divorced and I don’t know how to feel_. Annabeth tells him things she’s not ever told anyone, because for some reason printing her problems in tiny letters on a piece of paper and closing it away in a locker, without consequence, makes her brave in a way that she can’t be around Thalia and Piper.

 _How pathetic_ , she thinks, _that I can tell a stranger I have never met more than I can tell my best friends._

In her real life, the custody battle between her parents comes and goes. It is settled relatively quickly: neither want Annabeth and the twins, but Athena spends most nights in hotels or on a plane, so they end up with Frederick. No one’s surprised, really, but the twins are oddly silent on the car on the way back from the courthouse, and Annabeth sits in the passenger seat with her temple against the window and waits for a meltdown. It doesn’t come, surprisingly: instead, as they are pulling into the driveway, Bobby says, “Does this mean we won’t see Mom anymore?”

Annabeth meets Frederick’s gaze in the mirror. He glances away. She is suddenly so, so tired.

“No, we will,” she says. “Just not as much.”

Bobby nods, chewing at his thumbnail. Matthew says, “I want to stay with her instead.”

She sees Frederick physically flinch away, like he’s just been struck, and she clenches her jaw. “Well, you can’t,” she says coldly. “So stop being babies.”

“I hate you,” he says, and it’s not the first time, recently, so Annabeth just sets her mouth in a straight, exasperated line and steps out of the car.

That night, as she is sitting in the windowsill, she opens up her contacts, and hovers her thumb over Athena’s name. She doesn’t particularly want to call her, but she didn’t stick around in the courtroom to hear them hammer out a visitation schedule, so she’s sure that however many times Athena will visit, it won’t be a lot. She’s not sure if she cares. Mainly, she’s worried about the twins, and since she knows Frederick won’t say anything, she has to be the one to nag her into coming.

She stares at the contact for a longer time, her finger dangerously close to the call button, before finally sighing and switching off her phone. The next morning, she leaves a note.

_The divorce was finalised yesterday._

_Are you okay?_

_I don’t know. I feel just sort of apathetic. Like I don’t really care.  
Is that bad?_

_I don’t think so._

_Really?_

_When my mom divorced Gabe I was so relieved. I hated him. I was so glad he was gone._

_That’s different, though._

_I guess. But you don’t owe them your emotions, or whatever. Your mom doesn’t sound like a stellar woman, I’ll be honest._

_I just don’t know what to feel. I just feel tired. Maybe a bit relieved, like I’m glad it’s over. I just don’t know what to do._

_That’s okay._

_I know._

_When Mom and Gabe got divorced it was weird. I couldn’t sleep for a long time. Mom went to therapy, for a bit. I didn’t think I needed it but then one time she brought me along and it helped, a bit. I still go, sometimes._

_You do?_

_Yeah. I didn’t realise it mattered that much, having him around? He only hit me once. But I guess he didn’t treat me very well, either, and I never knew my real dad, so he was sort of meant to be the replacement, and apparently having the only father figure in your life treat you terribly has long-term consequences. Who knew.  
Sorry, that was probably a bit of a downer. I’m doing much better now. Promise. Didn’t mean to get all depressing lol_

_It’s okay.  
Sometimes I can’t sleep, either._

_Because of the divorce?_

_I don’t know. It’s been going on for a while, even before the divorce. Though I guess they’ve been sort of mentally divorced for a long time. I’ve been taking sleeping pills and they kind of work but they sort of make me feel awful. I’ve gotten around three hours a night this past week._

_Jeez, and you’re still doing well in school?_

_Not really. I got my first C. Which I know isn’t bad but, I don’t know.  
Sorry, I know that sounds really stupid to complain about._

_No, it’s okay.  
Is it stress?_

_I don’t know. Sometimes your brain just doesn’t stop talking._

_I get that._

_You do?_

_Therapy, remember?_

_Right._

_It was worse when Gabe was around. Now it’s gotten better but there are just nights._

_I just feel so pathetic. Nothing’s wrong._

_Your parents got divorced._

_They’ve been technically divorced for years, this is just making it legal. You had your stepdad and I’ve got a friend who lives alone whose mom comes in once every blue moon just to get drunk and ask for money, and I can’t sleep for what? I hate feeling like this. I think my friends know something’s up. They keep asking what’s wrong but I don’t know how to tell them because I don’t know what to say._

_You could probably talk to them. Talking always makes things better._

_Now you sound like a therapist._

_Good to know those sessions paid off in some way._

_Haha.  
I don’t know. I’m not sure I can, to my friends. I don’t know why._

_Well, I’m here._

_I don’t want you burdened with my stuff._

_I told you about my abusive stepdad and you’re worried about your stuff?_

_I always feel like I’m just complaining about nothing._

_I can go first: yesterday, they didn’t have any cookies in the cafeteria, and I was a bit bummed._

_That’s stupid._

_Are you invalidating my feelings, 167? Come on, complain. Safe space. Open forum. What happens in the locker stays in the locker._

_You are such a weirdo._

_Open expression!_

_I accidentally dropped my chapstick this morning and now it’s covered in lint and it kind of sucks because it was the only one that didn’t dry my lips out._

_Good! I’m wearing the same pair of socks two days in a row because I forgot to do the washing and now I’m probably gonna get athlete’s foot._

_I hurt my knee on a table and now it hurts._

_I feel really lucky that I have this job at Argo but it’s sometimes really tiring._

_My dad hasn’t left the basement in three days and I have to look after my brothers._

_I’m scared that I’ll turn out like Gabe. That he somehow wormed his way into my DNA._

_I’m sometimes so afraid that I can’t leave my bed.  
I’ve never told anyone that before._

_That’s okay._

_Thanks. For listening._

_Anytime._

*

Piper is talking to someone on her laptop when Annabeth slips through her window.

She looks up when she hears her come in, offers a beam and a, “Hey, Beth!” as Annabeth drops to the floor and pulls off her sneakers. Piper doesn’t look particularly busy, though frankly that isn’t indicative of anything, mainly because Piper is very selective about what she chooses to concern herself with (a while ago, she had FaceTimed her at ten pm wanting to show her a magic trick she’d learnt, as though they didn’t have an important exam the next morning), but when she waves her on the bed Annabeth reckons that she’s not interrupting anything wholly important.

“Hey,” she says, dropping down on the mattress next to her. “Who you talking to?”

“Just Percy,” Piper says, and Annabeth’s heart skips a beat in her chest. Oblivious, Piper angles the laptop towards her, so she can see Percy on the webcam, lying on his bed, chewing on a pen. He startles a little when he sees her and pulls the pen out of his mouth so quickly Annabeth hears it almost go flying across the room. “Say hi.”

“Hey,” Annabeth says. She can feel a smile twitch at the edges of her mouth, and she has to bite down on her lower lip to keep it from escaping. She feels weirdly shy: it’s the first time she’s seen him since the park. They’ve been texting a lot, but she forgot just how lovely his face is. Luckily, Percy seems just as flustered, and nods at her, eyes sparkling as he badly tries to suppress a smile.

“Hey,” he says.

From out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth notices Piper’s eyebrows come together, and her glancing between the two of them, so before she can put any more pieces together Annabeth quickly turns to her and says, “So, what are you guys doing?”

Piper narrows her eyes at her, but thankfully accepts the segue. “We’re reading over the big break-up scene,” she says. “Chiron just sent it through, asked for our input.”

“And how’s it looking?”

“Pretty good, actually.” Piper flicks up a Google tab, hiding Percy’s face onscreen, and shows her the email. “Was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get my big bitch-slap moment, but I suppose we must all make sacrifices.”

Percy cracks up. “Bitch-slap? You’re the one breaking up with me.”

“Uh, yeah, and it wouldn’t have killed you to be a little homophobic so I could clobber you. It’s also sort of my coming-out scene,” she clarifies to Annabeth, who just blinks. “Percy unfortunately takes it very well.”

“What can I say,” Percy says, “I’m a gentleman.” Annabeth can’t see his face but she can imagine the smile, and her chest warms. “Instead I just cry.”

“He’s not kidding,” Piper tells Annabeth, “he does a lot of crying in this scene.”

“It’s apparently meant to be good for you,” Annabeth says.

Piper pokes her shoulder. “And you’d know, wouldn’t you, as our resident healthy coping mechanism girl,” and Annabeth sticks out her tongue.

“Well, I think I’m probably going to achieve immortality at this rate,” Percy grumbles. There is the sound of a keyboard tapping. “How is it you only shed a tear? This is your big moment.”

“Yeah, but I’m the love of your life.”

“No need to rub it in, jeez.” Piper minimises the tab and Percy’s face comes back onscreen, and Annabeth can see him intently frowning at something on his own screen, typing.

“What are you doing?” Piper says.

“Sending a politely-worded message to Chiron asking if I need to start tearing up literally after the second line.”

Piper snorts. “Good luck trying to convince him of that.” Percy rolls his eyes affectionately and then pulls his laptop closer, eyes flickering across the screen as he presumably pulls up his emails. Piper takes the distraction to turn to Annabeth, squeezing her hand. “Hey, babe,” she says, softly enough that the microphone won’t pick it up, “everything okay? Sorry about all this, I didn’t know you were coming over.”

“No, it’s fine. Everything’s good.”

Piper smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to see you.”

Piper grins broadly at that. “Flatterer,” she says, but Annabeth can see she’s genuinely pleased. She waves a hand at her laptop. “Well, you can hang if you want, though I probably won’t be super great company. Me and Percy will be a while, have to iron out all the kinks and whatnot. You can put on Netflix or something, if you want. Or—” Realisation dawns on her face, for some reason, and she makes a frustrated noise, smacking her hand against her forehead. “Oh, shoot, I was meant to lend you my notes for you to copy, wasn’t I? I’m so sorry. Do you still need them? You can copy them now.”

Annabeth’s eyebrows come together for a few moments, not understanding, before she finally realises what Piper’s talking about. Right, her _notes_. That feels like so long ago. She lets out a laugh. “No, don’t worry.”

Piper squints at her disbelievingly. “Really? Because if you’re just trying to politely worm your way out because you think my notes are inferior then may I say, I have maintained a solid B—”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “No, seriously. I don’t need them anymore.”

Piper gives her a suspicious once-over. “Okay, what? Why do you look so shifty? Did you cast some dark spell to fix them?”

These theatrics. “You’ll never guess what my locker-mate did.”

“What?”

“He _rewrote_ them for me.”

“Seriously?”

“Swear it!” Annabeth says. She can sort of see how one gets drunk with power when regaling information like this: it’s very intoxicating. Wow, she really is turning into Piper. “I opened my locker and there was a brand-new notebook in there, with all my other textbooks, so I pull it out, and it’s just filled with writing. All my notes! He must have found my old notebook in the trash when I threw it away.”

Piper looks floored. “How long did that take him?”

“I have no idea.”

“Jeez.” Piper flops on her back and stares up at the ceiling. “That’s the single most romantic thing _ever_.”

Annabeth is suddenly very aware that Percy can probably hear everything. “It wasn’t romantic,” she clarifies quickly, glancing towards the screen, trying to make him understand: but Percy has gone strangely still. She frowns, for a moment thinking that the screen has frozen, until she says, “Percy?” and he jerks like he’s just been stung.

“Huh?” he says, sounding a little strangled, and then he clears his throat. “Sorry, what were you saying? I didn’t catch that.”

“Nothing that concerns you,” Piper says, “don’t worry your funny little head. Did you finish emailing Chiron?”

“Uh—yeah, yeah.” He still looks a little pale, though that could always be the harsh lighting from the lamp by his bed. He shifts, uncomfortably. “Yeah, I did, we’ll just have to see what he says.”

“I bet you’ll just get an email back being like, _hi Percy, respectfully, I disagree. Thanks, Chiron_. Bet you ten whole dollars.”

“Wow, ten dollars,” Annabeth says.

“Whatever.” Piper waves her off. “Perce, any more notes? Should we do a read-through, just to make sure it flows well?”

“Uh.” Percy clears at his throat, shifts. “I actually, uh, just remembered that I’ve got a lot of homework I need to do, so...”

“Oh.” Piper looks a little surprised, but she nods. “Oh, okay, yeah. Have fun. Call me later?”

“Yeah, of course.” Percy’s eyes flick to Annabeth, and even though he still looks a little off, the small smile he gives her softens his whole face, and Annabeth warms to her toes. “Uh, nice seeing you, Beth. I’ll text you?”

Annabeth has to bite her lip to stop herself from smiling and nods. “Yeah.”

“Cool. Bye, guys.” He gives a dorky little peace sign, and then the screen goes black. When Annabeth glances at Piper, she’s frowning a little.

“That was weird, right?” she says. “I wasn’t imagining that?”

Annabeth shrugs, trying to pretend that it’s not slightly niggling at her too. “I mean, I guess. I don’t know.”

Piper glances at her, and Annabeth feels her mouth go dry, but before she can make any more excuses, Piper is turning to face her properly, completely ignoring her laptop. “Okay, spill,” she says. “And don’t say that it’s nothing, because there were some serious energy exchanges happening just there and you weren’t even in the same room. What’s going on with you two? Did my matchmaking actually work?”

“There’s nothing going on,” Annabeth protests, a little weakly, but Piper clearly isn’t having any of it, because her eyebrow raise is nothing short of utterly scathing, and Annabeth acquiesces. “Okay, maybe there is, but—”

Piper grins. “I knew it!”

“ _But_ we’re taking it slow. Just—friends. We’re getting to know each other.”

“You like him, though.”

And Annabeth can’t deny that. “Yes. Very much.”

Piper’s eyes actually mist over. “Oh, _Annabeth_.”

“Don’t get sappy,” Annabeth warns, “we already cried when you recounted your date with Jason.”

“Because it was the single most romantic thing to have ever happened and none of you will ever top it,” Piper says, but she obediently wipes at her eyes. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I’m just so happy for you.”

“You big baby,” Annabeth says: she’s only half-serious, though, and dutifully lets Piper pull her into a cuddle. “This is why I don’t tell you anything.”

“ _Someone_ has to be happy for you. God knows you won’t.”

Annabeth smiles a little into her jumper, feeling her own eyes get a little damp. Piper’s one of the most dramatic people she knows: but she’s also one of the most thoughtful, and so, so generous, with everything. She reminds her of Percy, in that regard, and she says as much.

Piper smiles at her. “Yeah?”

“Don’t get a big head.”

“You told me I remind you of the boy you like. In what universe am I not going to get a big head?”

Annabeth rolls her eyes and tries to move away. “Whatever.”

“No, no, come back.” Annabeth puts up a half-hearted squirm for a few moments, before giving up, and collapsing against her shoulder. “How so?”

“I don’t know. You’re both kind. And drama queens.” Piper grins at that. “You’re both really... open, you know? I don’t know how to say it. I’ve always been sort of jealous.”

“Really?”

“You’re just so brave. I’m working on that, I think.”

“For Percy?”

“He makes me want to be brave. He is so... unafraid, of what he feels. And I’m trying to—do the same. Be a bit more like that.” She pauses. “But I’m not doing it _for_ him. If you get what I mean.”

She risks a glance at Piper, who is smiling at her softly that Annabeth is afraid she’s going to start crying again. But instead, she just reaches out and takes her hand, lacing their fingers together. “I get it,” she says. “We don’t let men dictate what we do with our lives.” Annabeth snorts. “Okay, but seriously, though. I’m really happy for you. You know that, don’t you?”

Annabeth thinks of every single time she’s come through her window for something, usually something bad, because her bed and her room and her unequivocal kindness has always been a safe space for her. Her local universe. It’s a small spot where infinity doesn’t feel so scary, because nothing can get them here. So yeah, Annabeth knows it. She squeezes her hand, and Piper squeezes it back, and she thinks of later tonight when she gets home, what she’ll text Percy, and what he’ll text back.

“Yeah,” she says, “I know.”

*

The next week, there is a teacher’s conference that means everyone gets to go home early. Thalia’s only driving force seems to counting the minutes to when she gets to leave school, so she’d known this in advance, and they’d planned a movie night, but then life got in the way, and between Chiron scheduling an extra-long shoot because it won’t go dark as fast and Thalia’s wealthy dad stopping in to take her to dinner, they had to cancel.

“He is such a scheming bastard,” Thalia fumes, as they head out of school. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he picked today of all days because he knew I had plans.”

“I doubt he cares that much,” Annabeth says.

“No, he thrives off dysfunction,” as though she does not also. “He probably got his secretary to do it. I’ve told you my conspiracy that he’s involved in underground CIA dealings, right?”

To be honest, Annabeth would not be surprised if this was true, only because the only time she has ever met Thalia’s father, it was eight in the morning after a sleepover and he was already wearing a full-piece suit, and he had looked at her so witheringly when she shyly asked if she could get past him for the cereal that she’d nearly swallowed her tongue and instead just took an apple. However, Thalia is also second only to Piper for theatrics so Annabeth just says, “It wouldn’t have worked, anyway, not with Chiron scheduling an extra film shoot with Piper.”

Thalia sighs. “You’re right. Shame, though, this would have given us an excellent chance to stay behind and watch, maybe catch her in the cheerleading uniform.”

“I feel like you should develop some productive hobbies. Like knitting.”

“My only hobby is vengeance.”

“I’ve heard macramé is meant to be pretty good.”

Thalia rolls her eyes at her, but before she can say anything an expensive black car pulls in front of the school, the engine purring. Annabeth does not need Thalia’s exasperated sigh to know that it belongs to her dad, because if she had to imagine Zeus Grace as a form of automobile it would probably look something like this. In comparison, Thalia would probably be a clunky motorcycle missing a wheel.

“Damn,” Annabeth says, with a low whistle. “He even got you a chauffeur?”

“He’s called Argus,” Thalia says darkly. “He doesn’t talk.” She throws her backpack over one shoulder. “Well, I guess that’s my cue. Tell Piper I said bye, yeah?”

“Will do,” Annabeth says, giving her a quick hug. “Good luck with your dad tonight. You’ll be fine. Just order the most expensive thing on the menu and spill your drink everywhere.”

Thalia gives her a sharkish grin. “Who do you think I am?”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “See you later.”

“See you, girlie.”

She watches her hop down the rest of the steps to the car, which has already garnered a few looks from other students, and throws open the door and slides into it with the petulance of a child, to which Annabeth has to suppress a smile. Just as the engine roars to life and it starts to leave, Annabeth feels a hand land on her shoulder, and when she turns Piper’s just appeared next to her.

“Hey,” she says, “did I just miss her?”

“Yeah, her dad sent a driver.”

“Lucky bitch,” Piper says, but a little ironically, because they both know it’s not really a good thing. She takes her hand. “Hey, by the way, are you doing anything now?”

“Now?” Annabeth frowns. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. Why?”

“You should stay, for filming, tonight.”

A smile spreads across her face. She’s never been allowed to before. “Yeah?”

“If you want.”

“Will I get to see you in costume finally?”

It’s a joke, and Piper is nice enough to huff a little at it, but she squeezes her hand. “Yeah, but... this is Percy’s night, tonight.”

Oh. Annabeth pauses. “Yeah?”

“I think he’d like it if you were there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Annabeth hasn’t really taken the time to think what life is going to be like now that she and Percy are dating. Are they even dating? They text, almost every night. She knows that’s important. But watching him act like this, being offered to come on set for no other reason than just to sit and spectate, feels intimate, in a way she’s not really sure she’s comfortable with yet. But Piper is giving her an imploring look and Annabeth thinks how nice it would be to see him again, the way he would smile at her, and the way it would fill her tummy with butterflies. She squeezes Piper’s hand and says, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

Piper grins at her. “I’m glad.”

“Will I at least see you in the costume?”

“Regular clothes for me today,” Piper says, because she is nothing if not devious. Annabeth would not be surprised if the cheerleading costume was just a mind-game that Piper used to goad Thalia and wasn’t real at all. “Come on, let’s go.”

It’s being filmed in park right behind the school, the one Annabeth, Piper and Thalia used to go to make daisy chains and get stoned, respectively. It’s become a tradition for the seniors to eat lunch in it during the summer, when the flowers have bloomed and the trees start to grow green fringe, but in the winter it’s deserted. Even now, in the wisps of spring, Annabeth can sort of see why: everything is still a little grey and crisp, the trees bleached and naked, covered in tiny green shoots, trembling in the faint wind. There are daffodils beginning to emerge in the damp grass, though, and she smiles a little at it. Dead, and sealed in frost: but a little hopeful, too.

It’s too cool for T-shirts but not cool enough for jackets, so Piper gets changed into a pair of jeans and a sweater. Annabeth has never seen her wear something like it before; it’s not drastically different from her usual attire, but different enough that Annabeth feels a little uncomfortable looking at her. For the first time, she thinks she can see how Thalia stands to watch the show: in these clothes, Piper is a whole new person.

Percy is stood talking to a man in a wheelchair when they approach, Piper still holding Annabeth by the hand. He doesn’t see them until they’re only a few feet away, and he only notices Piper at first. “Piper,” he says, and the man in the wheelchair turns too: and then he sees her. “Annabeth?”

“Hey,” she says. Suddenly, she feels a little shy. Is she allowed to be here? Will Percy find it weird?

But Percy’s giving her a look like he’s happy she’s here, and she feels her racing heart settle. She smiles back, hesitantly.

The man, greets them both warmly, introduces himself as Chiron, the director. He takes Annabeth’s hand between both of his own and looks at her in the eyes when he does so, and gives her a twinkly-eyed smile when she says that she hopes it’s okay that she’s here. “Of course,” he says. “You can sit with me, if you would like.”

His kindness feels almost undeserved. “Thank you,” she says, a little hesitantly. He just nods at her, and then turns to Piper.

“Miss McLean, a minute, if you don’t mind?”

They take a step away, as Chiron presumably takes her through notes for the scene, leaving Percy and Annabeth standing by themselves. Now that they’re alone, Annabeth feels a little braver; steps closer, dares reach out to take his hand. “Hey,” she says, a little softer. Just for him.

“Hi,” he says, just as quietly, properly links their fingers together. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”

“Piper asked if I wanted to tag along. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, of course!” His face is so beautifully earnest. “No, yeah. I’m glad. I’m glad you’re here.”

It’s enough to make her feel a little brave, too. “Me, too.”

Luckily, his eyes go impossibly soft. “Yeah?”

“Don’t fish, it’s not becoming.”

“I’m always becoming,” he says, but he squeezes her hand, uses his other to press his thumb to a stray curl that’s emerged from her ponytail. “I missed you. Too long, since we last saw each other.”

He is so unafraid, how he says it. “We texted last night.”

“Yeah, too long.”

She has to smile at that. “You’re sweet.”

“That’s me.” He swipes a thumb across her hand, back and forth, and it’s a small gesture but it’s enough to drain any remaining tension left in her body. “Are you staying?”

“If that’s okay.”

“Yeah, of course. Always okay.” His thumb moves once, twice. “Um, just—I may not be super great company for a bit, afterwards.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs. “This one’s a bit of a sad one so I might take a while to—decompress. Get out of his head. If that’s okay. You don’t have to stay.”

“I’ll stay,” Annabeth says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Of course. Always okay.” She is teasing, but only a little.

They smile at each other. Percy’s thumb traces the ridge in her knuckle, before finally slowing to a stop. “I should probably go,” he says.

“Yeah, sorry. Do your broody actor thing.”

He smiles. “My broody actor thing?”

“What’s it when actors immerse themselves? Method acting?”

“Method acting? Like Judd Nelson?”

“You think you’re like Judd Nelson?”

“Hey, you said it, not me.”

“You’re more like Anthony Michael Hall.”

“Obviously I’m the wrestler.”

“The wrestler? Really?”

“And you can be the goth girl.”

“Don’t they end up together at the end?”

“Then it fits.”

She rolls her eyes to hide the flutters in her tummy.

He squeezes her hand, and then takes a step back. “I’ll see you after, yeah?”

“Yeah. Break a leg.”

He smiles at her as he walks away. “Always.”

She watches him go. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt like this before: they’ve only known each other for a short while but she can’t really think of anyone outside of Thalia and Piper whose company she’s enjoyed so much. There’s something so almost achingly sincere about him, so wholly unself-conscious about it. She knows they’re both still a little shy about this, whatever _this_ is, but she doesn’t know how he can be so unafraid to be so open. _I missed you_. She wishes she could be so brave. She wishes she could tell him that she hasn’t stopped thinking about him.

She looks around for a place to sit, thinking she can perch against a wall, maybe a bench, then she can at least get some schoolwork done, but then from across the park she catches Chiron’s eye, sat in his wheelchair behind the camera, and he gestures for her to come over. In all honesty, she hadn’t thought he was being serious, thought he was just being polite, but this unwarranted kindness makes something in her throat clog. It’s been a while, since someone has been so thoughtful.

She goes over, anyway, and he gestures to a stool beside his wheelchair. The grass is knotted thin beneath her feet, but there are some rogue weeds that have emerged from the frost that hang by her ankles; she tugs at one until she feels it unearth, twists it around her fingers. Chiron is talking to one of the cameramen when she arrives, but the conversation quickly wraps up, and he turns to her.

“Thanks for the stool,” she says.

He simply smiles at her, warmly. He has eyes that look thousands of years old, weathered, like an old book. He reminds her of the good parts of her own father. She can see why Piper theorises that he’s immortal. “Of course,” he says, simply. For a few moments, they just watch as Piper and Percy talk quietly between themselves over a copy of the script, a few feet away, so Annabeth turns her feet inward, thinking the conversation is over. But then, after a minute, he says, “Do you have an interest in television, Annabeth?”

She’s a little surprised. “Not really,” she confesses. “I’m more into Math.”

“Science?”

“A little bit. Maybe physics.”

“Ah, physics.” Chiron nods. “The universe. What a magnificent creature. She does what she wants.”

“Yeah.”

Chiron smiles at her, like she’s just passed some sort of silent test. “You just sit back and enjoy, Annabeth.”

She manages a smile back, and then he turns to the cameraman next to him and starts talking to him about angles. She looks back out at the set, where Piper and Percy have now split, at opposite sides of the park. She’s has never been on a TV set before, never even given much thought to how these sorts of things are made, but watching this now feels nothing short of beautiful. She has no context for this scene, doesn’t know about the relationship between Percy and Piper’s characters, other than that they have had an awkward sex scene and Piper’s character is most probably a lesbian, but even just watching them both psyche themselves up for it, Percy sat on the bench, Piper out of frame, feels strangely intimate. It’s incredible, how Piper just transforms in front of her eyes; tucks herself in, hands pressed either side of her ribs, hunches over. Unbidden, Annabeth’s eyes flick to Percy on the bench, and something in her clenches as she watches him get himself into character, fold himself inwards too. She can almost see the life leave his eyes.

They’re consummate.

“We’ll run it through fully,” Chiron says to them. “Then we’ll redo certain moments. Is that okay?”

They both nod.

“Action.”

It is almost surreal, just how easily they can slip into someone else’s skin. Annabeth watches them run it all the way through: it’s a long scene, almost six minutes, and most of it is spent just sat in silence, trying to find words, but she is engaged for every single moment. Her homework remains untouched in her bag. By the end of it, she feels tears prick a little at her own eyes, just watching them both sit there on the bench, a careful few inches apart, quiet, filled with something like finality. When Chiron calls cut she starts a little, half having forgotten she was watching a performance, but to her surprise Piper and Percy don’t move much, just stay where they are: the only inkling they give that they’ve heard him at all is the small inclination of their heads towards him.

She frowns a little, watches as instead of them coming to him Chiron wheels himself over, the script balanced in his lap. He talks them through moments, she can’t make out much of what he’s saying, just that he is careful not to get too close, like he doesn’t want to encroach on their space, and then after a few minutes, they nod, and he comes back over.

“Why are they still sat down?” she says to him, when he parks himself back next to her.

Chiron smiles at her. “They’re still in character.”

Oh. Annabeth hadn’t thought of that. Her eyes flick to them again, watches as Piper moves back across the park to her starting position, and then at Percy, still on the bench. She is too far away to properly see but she knows that he is crying a little: it’s not a surprise, only a few weeks ago they’d been joking about it, but if she thought that would cheapen it, she was wrong. Instead, her heart twinges.

She loses track of how many more times they run the scene, over and over, “Percy, this time, look at her when she sits down”, “Percy, this time, don’t”, “Piper, take your time”, but by the time Chiron is content and calls a wrap, the sky is beginning to smear pink and her feet are numb. She stands, blows into her cupped palms to try and regain feeling, and watches as Piper dramatically keels off the side of the bench. Percy manages a small laugh, and Annabeth smiles a little, watching them. She takes a step forward, but then Piper starts heading her way instead, so she pauses, and waits.

As soon as she’s close enough, she pulls her into a hug. “You were brilliant,” she says. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Piper smiles. It’s a little thin, eyes exhausted, but it’s genuine. “Thanks for coming, Beth.”

“Of course. Are you good, getting home?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just need to fall asleep for approximately the next forty-eight hours.” She squeezes her shoulder, and then turns to Chiron, who is sat next to them, watching her with an amused, fond look on his face. “How’d I do, Boss?”

“Wonderful, as always, Miss McLean,” he says, and Piper practically glows. They fall into conversation, but Annabeth lets it fade to the background as her eyes scope out Percy, who is still by the bench, talking to one of the extras. He is facing away from her but even just admiring the slope of his shoulders, the curve of his neck, she feels herself warm a little, knowing that he is bright and lovely and _hers_. Piper must catch her staring, because when Annabeth glances back she has her eyebrows raised, and she blushes a little. Piper just rolls her eyes and gestures with her head, so, with one last hug, Annabeth gratefully heads over.

“Hey.”

Percy looks up when she approaches, tiredly. His eyes are dull but something in his face softens when he sees her. “You stayed.”

“Said I would, didn’t I?” She hasn’t seen him like this before, completely drained. She thinks, I can be brave like him, and offers a hand. “Let’s go home.”

“You don’t need to, Annabeth.”

“I know,” she says simply, “I just want to spend time with you.”

She sort of feels like she’s flaying herself open. She hates being like this, letting herself be cracked open enough for him to have access to her soft vulnerable parts where he can strike. But it is worth it for the small smile he offers her. It is nothing like the smile he gave her before, bright and open, but even dampened, he is still lovely to look at. He hesitates, for a moment, and then takes her hand: slowly, belatedly, like he is still coming online. This is okay. She lets him take his time, lets him stand up, then squeezes his hand. They are stood very close, and she wants to touch his face. Then she realises that she can, and pauses, because that’s coming on too strong; then realises that she should, because Percy is still slow-moving, still sluggish, still caught between himself and his character. She tentatively presses a thumb to his cheekbone, it is tacky with drying tears, watches his eyes flutter as he gets used to the feeling. She remembers the days when sometimes she feels like she can’t get up, like there is something on her chest and she doesn’t have the energy to even open her eyes, so instead she just puts her head under the pillow and keeps her curtains drawn and hopes for sleep. One day it was like this and Thalia had come over, and to her surprise she’d just lain next to her, on her phone, and when she’d finally emerged from the covers, Thalia had simply wordlessly laced their fingers together, let her slowly regain feeling bit by bit in the space where they were connected. She can do this for Percy. She can.

“Yours?” she says, softly.

A beat. And then Percy nods.

They wave goodbye to the crew and get on the train, sit side by side. Annabeth wants to put her head on his shoulder but she is not brave enough for that yet: so she takes his hand, like Thalia took hers, and rubs her thumb across the back of it, watches his eyes slowly become more and more alert. Then it’s their stop, and they get off, quietly, swipe out of the barriers, and head to his apartment. They don’t talk, not on the stairs on the way up, not as Percy unlocks the door, not even as they take off their shoes and move quietly to his bedroom. He moves to his bed, then pauses, uncertainly next to it, so Annabeth sits on it, and after a moment, he does too, then lays down. She looks at him, the long, capable line of his body, and puts her head on the pillow next to his.

They are nose to nose. She can see a faint splash of freckles across his nose. He probably has a close-up to her smudged makeup. She wants to swipe her fingers under her eyes, scrub away her smeared mascara, but they’re too close for her to do it without bumping into him, and she doesn’t think she wants to move away just yet.

“Hey,” she whispers, suddenly shy. She’s never been in a boy’s room like this before, on his bed. She doesn’t know what to do. Is this the part where they have sex? She doesn’t think she wants to have sex right now.

Luckily, Percy doesn’t either. He smiles a little, barely reaching his eyes. “Hey, you,” he says, his voice barely louder than hers. His eyes are tired but warm when he reaches out, traces her eyebrow. He touches her with such wonderment, like he can’t quite believe she’s here. Like he’s the lucky one.

Annabeth thinks every night to herself how she managed to attract someone like this, and he has the nerve to look at her like that. Like she’s worth something. Sometimes it’s so intimate she wants to close her eyes.

She doesn’t, though. She lets him touch her face, and then, when his hand falls on the pillow between them, reaches out, gently circles his wrist, presses two fingers against his pulse. She can feel it, slow and reassuring, through the pads of her fingers. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” he says, after a long moment. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“This sort of sucks. Usually I’m cool.”

“You’re never cool.”

“I’m always cool.” He closes his eyes. “I wanted to impress you with my acting.”

You always impress me, she says. “You did,” she says, softly.

“I’ll be okay in a bit.”

“I don’t care.”

He cracks an eye open. “Yeah?”

Her throat is thick with everything she wants to tell him, but the words won’t come out, they are stuck, so she just nods wordlessly, presses her fingers a little harder. We’re okay, it says. We’re okay. “Yeah,” she whispers.

“I might fall asleep.”

“That’s okay.”

“You can leave whenever.”

“I’ll be here,” she says.

He doesn’t respond, but his lips tug in a half-hearted smile. She watches him drift into a sleep, his eyes fluttering under his eyelids. His lips are parted, a little, his breath coming out even between them, his eyelashes dark against his cheeks. Annabeth feels herself twist, a little, just at the sight of him, watching him, this beautiful boy in front of her, asleep, completely drained, completely open. She doesn’t think she has known empathy like this before: so encompassing it takes you down, until you are in the depths as well. She supposes it’s what makes him so good of an actor, but it hurts as well: to know that he is able of feeling so much. She imagines what it would be like to tell him about the ugly parts of herself.

She watches his sleeping face. Thinks, _he is too good for me_.

She should probably leave. She does not deserve to lie here watching him sleep, watching him be so effortlessly, easily vulnerable in a way she can never be, in a way that he can never understand. The selfless thing to do would be to get up and leave, let him sleep, let him find someone else to share a bed with him, someone who is brave enough to touch his face back, put her head on his shoulder, someone who can hold him without thinking of an expiry date.

But she has always been a little bit selfish. So she stays.

*

Percy’s mom comes home when Annabeth is making tea.

She’s in the kitchen, peering through the cupboards, trying to find the sugar, when she hears the front door snick open, and she whirls around in surprise to find an older woman stood in the doorway, unwrapping a scarf from around her neck. Annabeth feels strangely guilty, like she’s just been caught doing something naughty, and she feels her heart thud: she knows, at once, that this is Percy’s mom. But what will she think of her?

Thankfully, the woman just smiles. “Hello, love,” she says, softly, “are you looking for something?”

Annabeth feels herself go a little pink. “Uh, just the sugar,” she says. She finds she can’t meet her eyes, instead looks down at her feet. She has a hole in one of her socks; her big toe pokes through.

“Top cupboard.”

Annabeth manages a “thanks” but doesn’t turn to it; instead, watches Percy’s mom hangs her coat in the entryway, and then come into the kitchen too, bypass her for the teabags. She picks a green, Annabeth chose chamomile, thinks green tastes too medicinal, and then pulls out a mug of her own. Together, they wait for the kettle to pop.

“You must be Annabeth,” the woman says, finally. Her tone is free of judgment or accusation, doesn’t say it like a condemnation, like Annabeth has gotten used to her name sounding in the mouths of grown-ups. “I’m Sally. Percy’s told me a lot about you.”

To her surprise, she pulls her in for a hug, which Annabeth belatedly reciprocates, though her mind is elsewhere. Percy’s talked about her? When she pulls back, Sally must see it in her face, because she laughs a little.

“Are you surprised?”

“Percy talked about me?”

“Hasn’t stopped,” Sally says. “You must be special.”

Annabeth has never felt that special before. She feels herself warm to her toes. “I guess,” she says, suddenly feeling a bit shy. She wriggles her toe in her sock. Then, when the silence stretches, she adds, quietly, “He’s special to me, too.”

Sally smiles. “I’m glad to hear it. Pour?”

The kettle has popped. Annabeth nods, and pours hot water into Sally’s mug, and then does so for herself as well, filling it up halfway. “Uh, where’s the milk?”

“Fridge.”

Annabeth gets the milk, pours it in as well. This is her favourite part, she likes how it fractalizes in the water, and then she nudges the mug so it mixes properly. Sally watches her as she caps the carton, then spoons in one, two, three spoons of sugar.

“You like it sweet,” she notes, but unaccusatory, just an observation.

“It’s for Percy,” she says. She swirls it, a little self-conscious. “He’s asleep.”

“Long scene?”

“Kind of.”

“It’s kind that you’re staying.”

She just shrugs, tightens her hands around the mug.

Sally smiles at her, warmly, and then squeezes her shoulder, picking up her own mug. “It’s good to finally meet you, Annabeth,” she says. “Maybe we can do dinner, sometime.”

Annabeth nods, barely. “I’d like that,” she says.

Sally’s eyes soften over her mug, and she squeezes her shoulder again, before disappearing out of the kitchen.

Annabeth heads quietly back into Percy’s bedroom. The curtains are still drawn but Percy is sat up now, tiredly rubbing at his eye. When he hears her come in he looks up and he smiles, a little self-consciously.

“Hey,” he says. Sits up a little straighter. “I thought you’d left.”

Annabeth doesn’t know what to say; just lifts up the mug. “I was just making some tea.” Percy’s face softens, and the small smile he gives her causes something to flutter in her stomach. She never thought she was going to be like this, but something about Percy’s eyes makes her feel shy, unused to being looked at like she’s something special. She turns her feet in, tucks the toe peeping out of her sock under the other, and says, “I met your mom.”

“Did she come home?”

“Yeah, just a few minutes ago.” Annabeth hesitates. “I think I accidentally invited myself to dinner.”

“Mom is like that,” Percy says, “slippery slope. Talk to her long enough and she’s twisting your arm to stay.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah, she’s the best.”

_What’s that like?_

“She said that you talk about me,” Annabeth says.

She’s not really sure what reaction she’s expecting, but for Percy to smile broadly is not one of them. “I do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What—” She clears her throat. “What do you say?”

He grins at her. “Are you fishing?”

“What? No.”

“You’re fishing.”

“I’m nervous!” she says, and Percy laughs. “I’ve never met anyone’s parents before.” Percy raises an eyebrow. “Come on, like that.”

“Like what?” Asshole.

“With... subtext.”

“Oh yeah?” He’s smiling at her indulgently, eyes soft. He’s such an asshole. Annabeth thinks he’s never been lovelier to look at. “Is that what we have? _Subtext_?”

“Overt subtext.”

“Pretty sure that’s just context.”

She gives him a look. “Are you seriously arguing with me about this?”

“Sorry, sorry.” He pats the bed next to him. “Sit?”

Annabeth hadn’t even dared entertain the idea that she might be allowed back in his bed like this, without expectation, just lying with him, and she tries not to show how excited-nervous it makes her, as she balances the tea. She filled it with a little too much milk, it’s a shade lighter than she likes it usually, and too close to the brim, so instead of thinking about the fact that she’s getting back in bed with him she concentrates on the tea and not spilling it over the edge. She fails, a little, wobbles it when she’s sitting down, a little rocks over the edge, but she catches it with her finger, sucks it into her mouth. On the edge of too sweet: perfect. She hands it over, and Percy takes it like it’s solid gold, or something.

“Thanks,” he says. “Kind of you.”

Annabeth shrugs, a little bashful. They are shoulder-to-shoulder. It feels sort of formal, but she doesn’t want to turn around just yet to look at him in the face, in case she rocks the bed and upsets his tea. Or something. “Always makes me feel better,” she says.

She risks a glance at him, sees him smiling at her, so softly. “You’re so nice,” he says. He actually sounds like he means it.

“You haven’t even tried it yet.”

He does. “Sweet,” he observes, when he’s had a sip.

“Yeah.” Annabeth watches him, a little self-consciously. “I heard that it’s good to eat something kind of strong, when you’re sad. Like sour candy, or chili, or something. Sort of brings your senses awake again. Sometimes, I—” Her throat closes, and she swallows, hard. _Sometimes I do, when I’ve had a bad morning, with the candy an Argo crew member leaves in my locker every day_. It’s her cue to confess, but she can’t, so she doesn’t. “Too much?”

“No, no,” Percy says hurriedly, “it’s nice. Thanks, Beth.”

“Of course,” and it comes out maybe a little too soft, a little too earnest. “How are you feeling?”

Percy hums, around another sip of tea. “Tired,” he says, after a pause. “But better.”

“It’s the tea.”

“Obviously. Thanks for staying.”

“Yeah, anytime.”

He smiles at her, a little self-consciously. They’re both a bit shy around each other, she realises: it’s enough for her to suddenly feel a little brave, and hesitantly lets the tension seep from her shoulders, fold down, rest her head on his shoulder. Now that she can’t see his face it’s easier, so she also picks up his spare hand, lying between their legs, holds it between both of hers, traces his heartline with her finger. It’s broken down the middle.

“Are you reading my palm?” he says.

“You know it.”

“Personal assistant, and now psychic? Multi-faceted.”

“I also run a drug cartel on the side,” she says, and she feels his soft laugh rumble through his body. “But that’s more of a side-hobby.”

“Well, what does my palm say? Tell me my future. Will I become rich and successful?”

“I’m not a magic eight ball,” she says, but humours him anyway: “Chances are slim.”

He jostles her gently with his shoulder, and her head slips down to his chest. She freezes a little, unused to being so uninhibited like this around a boy, being able to touch him like this, but when he doesn’t shove her off, she hesitantly settles, presses her ear to his heart. She can feel his pulse, slow and steady, against the side of her head, and she counts the beats, transcribing them out in taps against his open palm.

“What told you that?” he says. “Did my hand tell you that? Are you communicating with it?”

“Jeez, you really have no idea how psychics work.”

“Come on, tell me my future.”

Annabeth heaves a sigh, but they both know that it’s more for show than anything, because she cradles his hand between both of hers, at all the lines running through it. She has never been particularly sentimental, but something about knowing Percy has lived all this life before her, a life that has given him these lines and these scars, warms her a little. She touches a scar, pink and curving down the middle of his hand. “What’s this from?”

“I thought you were meant to tell me that. You know, I’m beginning to suspect you’re not a real psychic.”

“I’m gathering data. To create a bigger picture.”

“Okay,” he sings, a little, but he turns his hand anyway, so she can see it better, and she fits her thumbprint into it. “Scorpion sting, would you believe it.”

“Seriously?”

“I was about twelve? Summer camp. Little bastard came out of nowhere, got me pretty good.”

“Huh.” She touches it again. “Did it hurt?”

“I was literally skewered by a scorpion, Annabeth, of course it hurt.”

“ _Skewered_. You are such a drama queen.”

“Lucky I’m an actor.”

“Every time you make that joke it gets less and less funny, and it wasn’t that funny to begin with.”

“Don’t lie.” He curls his fingers briefly around hers. “Do you need any more information or can you start predicting my future?”

“Impatient.”

“I’m already formulating my Yelp review. Three and a half stars. Psychic’s cute, but a total phony.”

“I’m predicting. Let me have time.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

Annabeth moves her finger up and down his palm, over the broken heartline. She says, “I’m sensing a romantic relationship on the horizon.”

She can almost feel him smile behind her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. The girl seems like a bit of an asshole, though.”

“Why so?”

“She declined you for coffee. I mean, jerk move.”

“Still ended up here, though.”

“Mm.” Up and down, again. “But she may... continue to be an asshole. Unintentionally.”

She can’t look at him, feels her breath suspended somewhere in her ears. Percy makes a thoughtful noise. “So... Accidentally Asshole?”

It’s so stupid it gets a laugh out of her, but she feels the tension expel, as well. “You’re so proud of that.”

“Good movie title.”

“Average.”

“I’ll send you the rights.”

“Wouldn’t want them.”

“Liar.”

“What, are you psychic too, now?”

“Yep. Can read your mind.”

“What am I thinking, then?”

“You’re thinking, _oh shit, he can read minds_.”

“Tell me a secret, then.”

“About yourself?”

“You can’t?”

“That’s not what I said.” A long, comfortable silence. “Tell me one first.”

“About me?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not how psychics work. You’re meant to tell me stuff.”

“I’m just... what did you say? _Gathering data_?”

“You’re so full of shit.” He laughs. “What should I tell you?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

“I love how specific you are.”

She can almost hear the eye roll. “Humour me.”

“You go first.”

“Bossy,” but in the voice he used when he called her special. She smiles where she knows he can’t see her. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t have any secrets?”

“I’m an open book.”

“You’re an actor, you must have some.”

“Must I?”

“Fantasies? Other actors you don’t like? Industry folklore that you’ve picked up through your harrowing journey with fame?”

Percy snorts. “Fame. That’s nice of you to say.”

“Isn’t that what you are? Famous?”

“Argo is my first job, you know.”

Her finger momentarily pauses in his hand. “Really?”

“Are you surprised?”

She is. By the way he’d been this afternoon, the way he’d cried until the tears froze on his cheeks, the fog he buried into so deep he couldn’t shake it off for hours, the one that still hangs on him in remnants even now, she’d thought he must have done something prior to this. Knowing that he’s still new, still fresh-faced, tugs at something in her, something deep and proud and a little selfish. He is so, so lovely, and he’s going to do so, so much.

“Is that your secret?” she says, instead.

“No, that’s a bad secret. Not really a secret, anyway.” He hums, contemplatively, and she starts tapping her finger again, moving it up and down his hand. It’s nice, being with him like this. She’s still a little nervous, thinks maybe she’ll always be around Percy, so afraid of doing something wrong and scaring him away, but she likes it: and for the first time, she thinks that’s enough. “Okay, I have one.”

“Hit me.”

“My secret is: I’m glad you’re here.”

“That’s a bad secret,” she says, though her heart is hammering.

“Are you the secret police?”

“Does it even count as a secret?”

“Sure it does. No one knows.”

“Except me.”

“Except you,” and then he folds his hand, her fingers caught between his, squeezes a little. “What’s yours?”

Annabeth thinks.

She has slept four hours this past week. Her mom is but a ghost, and her dad likes his helicopter models more than he likes her. There are days she feels so overwhelmed by absolutely _nothing_ that climbing out of bed feels like a feat fit for Everest.

But these aren’t secrets like _I’m glad you’re here_ , because she’s not brave enough for them to be. She traces Percy’s broken heartline with the very tip of her nail, and he shivers a little, and she thinks just how much power she has, and how very so very cruel the universe is for putting this lovely, silly boy into her lap, a boy who feels so much and shivers under her touch like he knows that she touches him like every time will be last.

If she was brave like Percy she would say:

I think I am falling in love with you, and I am afraid because I have seen what love can do to people and I don’t know if you can trust me with the responsibility. Because space is endless and full of holes and the universe is a magnificent creature who does what she likes, but she has never been kind to me, not in the way that you are.

My secret is this: you are too good for me.

But she doesn’t say that. Instead, she says, “I like black holes.”

“Is that a secret?”

“Unwittingly. Most people are asleep by the time it comes up in conversation. Apparently astrophysics isn’t very interesting.”

Percy snorts. “Can’t imagine why.”

“I think they’re fascinating,” Annabeth says. “They say at the centre of the universe is a black hole.”

“Scary.”

Yeah. Sometimes. “I guess,” she says.

“Could we all get sucked in?”

“They’re not whirlpools. As long as we’re not near the event horizon we’re fine.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I used to have this book,” she says, “about physics. I think Dad thought it was an encyclopaedia. It was more of a textbook than anything, it had a lot of practice exercises in it, with an answer pack at the back, but it’s how I got into space in the first place.”

When she looks at him, Percy looks a little sad, for some reason. “Used to?”

“I gave it away,” she says. “I think they needed it more than I did.”

“Sad.”

“No,” she says, “happy. They’re learning about space.”

It gets a laugh out of him, like she’d wanted, but he still looks a little bothered, for some reason. She just swipes her thumb across his open palm, says, “Do you want to hear more about black holes?” She is always much better talking about science than her own feelings.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really,” she says.

She tells him everything she can remember, about black holes, about their event horizons and gravitational forces. She talks until her voice has gone croaky and Percy’s nearly nodding off behind her. She knows that he doesn’t care, that she’s only talking for the sake of talking, keeping up a soundtrack as she traces a circle into his palm, like the centre of her own universe, to avoid her having to talk about anything else, to rip herself open enough that he can peer into her and see the rot inside. She tells him about how they’re formed in the wake of the collapse of a star, how they simply fold in on themselves once they’ve run out of fuel: once upon a time, that had confused her. How can something as bright as a star turn into something as dark as a black hole? But then she met stars in the forms of people, Piper, Thalia, and now Percy, the brightest, loveliest star she’s ever been allowed to cradle in her hands, and understood it entirely. In the absence of them she thinks the pockets of the universe they inhabited would fold into holes too.

Percy falls asleep behind her after ten minutes. She feels his breathing slow, shoulders relax, and then his head tips on top of hers, and she presses her smile into his shirt. He is probably still tired from this afternoon, though she doesn’t doubt it’s also a little to do with the science. Instead, she just stops talking, and then shifts, so she’s looking right at his face, at his eyes flickering beneath his closed eyelids. She almost wants to reach out and trace the line of his face with the tip of her finger so she can memorise the map of him but she doesn’t: she just lies there, quietly, still softly circling her finger in his open palm.

She wishes she was good with words, that she was brave enough to vocalise them, to tell him just how much he means to her. That in the short time they have known each other she has smiled more than she can remember: that with him, the universe doesn’t feel so big. He makes her feel like she is not just a speck of dust in an indifferent universe, but that, in the great chaos, she matters, like infinity has shrunk down to the size of his bedroom.

It’s silly, to think, and probably even sillier to say.

She just watches his eyelashes and thinks, _you are so precious to me._

*

Annabeth leaves the Jackson residence later than she’d intended. She falls asleep next to Percy on the bed and is only awoken when Sally knocks on his door asking if they want dinner, and Percy turns to her with a hopeful look that would have pinned her to the ground had her brain not already been preoccupied with an impending freak-out. She’d bluffed a family dinner back at hers that she needed to be getting back to, and Percy had let her go without much protest, just watched as she slid her feet back into her sneakers, and then walking her to the door.

“You know,” she says, as she puts on her coat, “I’m still waiting for you to read my mind.”

Percy grins at that, leaning against the wall. He is still a little sleep-soft, rumpled, with a pillow crease on his cheek and his hair all smushed to one side. It’s a lot more adorable than she cares to admit. “Annabeth, if you wanted me to have a peep inside your brain and see how hot you think I am, you should’ve just said.”

She gives him a look, and he laughs. “I’m starting to think that you can’t.”

“No, I can. I’ll do it right now.” He takes a step forward, and takes her hand. “You’re thinking... Percy needs to brush his hair. I’m sad I’ll be missing dinner with his mom, because she’s making casserole, and I’m sure her casserole is great, and my dinner back at home will probably pale in comparison. I have homework to do. Percy’s hot. And... I’ll miss him, when I go.”

Her heart is hammering. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says. “But maybe I’m just projecting.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she looks down at their joined hands, where her palm is pressed against his scorpion scar and the broken heartline.

“So, how’d I do?” he says.

She looks back at him, and pretends to consider. “Pretty accurate.”

He grins. “Yeah?”

“You do need to brush your hair.”

He rolls his eyes as she laughs. “Funny.”

“I know I am,” she says. She squeezes his hand one last time, and then lets go. “I should probably get going.”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” He watches as she zips up her coat. “Hey, uh, thanks. By the way.”

She glances up. “For what?”

He shrugs, looking a little self-conscious. “For staying behind. And for coming home with me. I probably wasn’t heaps of fun.”

“It’s okay.”

“This wasn’t really the ‘first date’ I had imagined us having.”

“I had a good time,” she says simply, and Percy looks so hopeful at that something in her chest clenches.

“Yeah?”

“Of course.”

They smile at each other. Annabeth puts her hands in her pockets.

“I’ll, uh, see you around,” she says.

“Yeah, you too,” he says. “Text me when you’re home?”

“I will. Bye, Percy.”

“Bye, Annabeth.”

It’s only once the door has closed behind her that she allows herself to properly start freaking out.

So she likes Percy. That’s fine. She’s had crushes on people before – Luke from summer camp; most of the boys on the Mathletes, at some point in time; even Piper, for about two seconds – but even as she tells herself that this isn’t anything different, she knows that’s not true. What she’s feeling now is unlike anything she’s ever felt before, and she’s _terrified_.

What had been so comforting only a few hours ago feels like ice in her veins. She suddenly understands what Thalia had meant when she said the anonymity of infinity was liberating, because in a universe that is only Annabeth and Percy, Annabeth suddenly feels suffocated.

This isn’t something she can run from. When you are but a speck of dust on the shoulders of a giant you are invisible, but now she feels like a goldfish in a bowl with nowhere to hide. Percy is real, and he likes her, and suddenly what she is carrying in her hands feels like it is worth a boulder, because there is so much more at stake here. She thinks of Percy’s grin as she left and thinks how lovely and how terrible it is to be such a pivotal part of someone’s happiness. What the hell does she have to offer someone like Percy? She’s always sad so certainly not happiness of her own; she’s also too uptight for her own good, too neurotic, so not something easy-going; and she’s probably not even that good at sex, either, so it’s not like she can fall back on that, either.

Annabeth has always favoured facts and logic over emotions, because it’s how the world works: Math doesn’t change depending on whether or not you missed the bus, and no matter how you draw it the angles in a triangle always add to the same thing. And then Percy, who is like the dark unexplored areas of the universe where numbers noodle into nothing, and suddenly she feels like nothing really makes sense anymore.

Percy is warm and kind and open and everything she’s not and he deserves so much better than her, but for some reason he’s decided that she’s good enough. It makes something uncomfortable rise in her stomach, something that settles, sharp and bitter, in her ribcage, like a large restless animal.

So she deals with it the only way she can.

_Can I tell you about something?_

The next morning, there’s a note in response.

_Of course, what’s up?_

_There’s a boy._

_Get it, 167._

_No, not like that. Well, a bit like that._

_What’s he like?_

_I don’t know. Nice smile. Nice eyes._

_Wow, it’s almost like I’m there._

_I’m serious._

_I’m failing to see the problem. Is he an asshole?_

_I think I’m falling in love with him, but I’m really, really afraid._

_Why?_

_He is so, so good. And I’m not. I don’t want to hurt him._

_Nobody’s that good._

_I know. But he tries. He feels so much. I don’t try._

_What are you really scared of, 167?_

_I’m scared that when he finds out that I’m not good like him he’ll realise he deserves better._

_No offence, but that’s shit._

_What?_

_He’s not that good. You’re not that bad. You’re both human. He doesn’t need a perfect person. I think you’re overthinking this._

_I know._

_Just breathe, 167. You’re allowed to fall in love. What are you so afraid of?_

_Losing him._

_For some reason, I really, really doubt that’ll happen._

And something in her eases a little.

She twists her lips thoughtfully, tracing over the note, thinking. Then, before she can lose her nerve, she pulls out her phone.

 **Annabeth** : _What are you doing tomorrow night?_

 **Percy** : _Nothing, why?_

 **Annabeth** : _Do you want to do something?_

 **Percy** : _Are you asking me on a date?_

 **Annabeth** : _If that’s okay_

 **Percy** : _:D_

 **Percy** : _Hell yeah_

*

Annabeth is not particularly poetic, but she thinks maybe it’s that part of her that brings Percy to the park she visited with Thalia.

It is just how she remembered, cold and shadowy and empty, but not as dark, because after what felt like the longest winter ever spring has finally arrived, and the days are beginning to bleed just a little longer. They meet at the front gates, Percy wearing a blue T-shirt under his hoodie that makes his eyes look almost bioluminescent in the night, and then Annabeth helps him climb the fence.

“I have to say,” he says, as he drops on the other side, “us breaking the law like this is kind of sexy.”

Annabeth gives him a look through the fence. “Keep it in your pants.”

“Right Bonnie and Clyde, we are,” Percy says, and then promptly trips on his shoelace.

Annabeth quickly scales the fence too, and then misjudges her jump and lands mere inches away from him so when she straightens their noses are but a whisker apart. She quickly takes a step backwards and turns to hide her red face, hoping the dusk makes it just look like she’s cold, but when she turns to face him, she’s not sure it’s so successful. He’s grinning at her, and she rolls her eyes to hide the way her ears burn. “Come on,” she says, “let’s go.”

They head deeper into the park, and Percy whistles as the jungle gym and other playground equipment become visible. “Damn,” he says, “I haven’t been to this place in _years_.”

“Race you to the swingset,” Annabeth says.

He glances at her. “Oh, you’re so on.”

“Go,” she says, and starts running, laughing as she hears his surprised, “Shit!” as he stumbles to catch up with her. Predictably, she reaches them a solid five seconds before he does, and smugly sits on one of the swings as he breathlessly flips her off. “Wow, poor form.”

“You cheated.”

“Smells like a sore loser to me.”

“I’ll show you a sore loser,” he says, and sits on the swing next to her. “Let’s see who can go highest. I bet I can do a full three-sixty.”

“I think we’re too big for this,” she says with a laugh, but obediently pushes off the ground. Her legs are too long for the size of the swings, and even bending her legs she still feels them graze the ground, but as next to her Percy whoops as he starts to build momentum the entire frame ominously shakes, like it’s threatening to unearth she finds she can’t bring it in herself to care. They swing for a few more minutes, Percy only getting higher than her because she’s pretty sure the swingset is about to come apart, before they start to slow to a gentle sway, Annabeth pushing herself back and forth with one foot. Percy glances over at her, eyes bright in the dark.

“I won,” he says.

“Yeah, because you were about to _break_ it. I was saving us a hefty fine.”

“Like we’re not already get fined if someone finds us.”

“Not if you keep shouting like that.”

“They’re victorious war cries,” he says, but he slows down anyway with a grin. “I’d protect you if someone came.”

“I don’t need protecting.”

“No, if it came to that you’d probably have to protect me, but, like, shield you with my fame.”

“ _Local actor of web series fame Percy Jackson found terrorising an old children’s park with mystery girl, tries to use said fame to get out of a breaking and entering penalty._ ”

“Headline of the year.”

“People would read it and be like, _who_?”

“Yeah, hence mystery girl.”

She gives him a look, and he laughs, pleased with himself. It’s a sound she wants to trap in a jar and keep close to her chest, to warm her whenever she feels sad.

He extricates himself from the swingset, long limbs getting tangled in the chain suspenders, and then holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s find the highest point. We can stargaze.”

The highest point is actually the tower at the top of the jungle gym, but it’s wooden and probably not an incredibly comfortable perch, so the next choice is the monkey bars. As she scales the side, Annabeth is hit by a sense of déjà vu, doing this exact thing with Thalia months ago. She smiles a little, remembering the bite of the cold bars against her hands, how she had blisters in her palms like she perpetually used to when she was younger and properly played on the monkey bars. This time the cold of the frame is a little more forgiving, and the night isn’t as cold, so uncharacteristically still she can hear the trains pulling in from the station several yards away. She pulls herself to the very top and shuffles along so Percy can fit as well, swinging her legs down. Moments later, as graceful as an elephant, Percy does the same, the whole frame shuddering beneath him.

“You should come with a caution label,” she says, and he laughs.

“I think I’m getting too big for a lot of these things.”

“You think?”

“Just an inkling.” He dangles his feet. “But not too big, yet.”

“I remember the park being so much bigger,” she says. “I remember coming when I was young and thinking all the equipment was so huge, and now coming back it’s like... almost sad, to see how small everything actually is.”

He glances at her. “Sad?”

“I don’t know. I guess. I used to think the slide was Everest, or something, and now I’m nearly as tall as it. Baby Annabeth had such small problems.”

“Big to her, though.”

“Yeah. I guess.” It’s nice, to put it that way.

They sit in comfortable silence for a few moments, thighs pressed together. Annabeth finds she would be content to just sit in silence for the rest of the night if it meant she had Percy’s comforting presence next to her, a warm reassuring weight against her side. Something about him is just so unexpectant, so easy, that she feels like if he asked, she would tell him anything. She knows that she is afraid but it’s hard to remember when being around him is the easiest thing in the world.

She’s been thinking about it, though, so she has to ask. “Why acting?”

Percy glances at her. “What do you mean?”

“What made you want to become an actor?”

“Do I not strike you as the type?”

“No, you do.” Maybe at first, not, but once she saw what he could do, she can’t imagine him doing anything else. “Just curious how it came about.”

“It sort of just happened,” he says, with a small laugh. “Chiron was doing a big casting call for teenagers, he visited a bunch of schools in the local area. He went to yours, too, right? Yeah. Anyway, so he came in, just said, anyone who wants to audition, can, and me and some friends thought why not? I’d never been very good at school. I have dyslexia, so it’s not the easiest for me, academics, and I used to kind of have anger management issues.”

“Really?” Annabeth can’t imagine someone as gentle, as kind as Percy, to have issues with anger.

He ducks his head self-consciously. “Yeah, it was—I don’t know. Made school difficult, for a while. And acting is just so far from academics that I was like, may as well, and, well. The rest is history, as they say.”

“What would you want to do, if not acting?”

He considers this. “I don’t know. Maybe a teacher?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Maybe for kids with learning difficulties, like dyslexia, or anger management. It could still happen, if I never get booked after Argo.”

“You will,” she says, because she’s not certain about a lot, but she can say that much. He is so much bigger than a small web series that only half a state watch. “I know it.”

“You do, yeah? With your psychic powers?”

“Aren’t you the mind reader? Shouldn’t you know, without having to ask me?”

“It’s a bit crowded in there,” he teases, and gently flicks her temple. “Too many thoughts of _Percy is the coolest person I’ve ever met._ Clearly I take up all your thinking capacity.”

“You must have interpreted ‘lame’ as ‘cool’, then.”

“That was weak, even for you.”

“Not my fault I was working on bad material.”

“Liar, I’m the best at jokes. Want to hear a classic?”

“Hit me.”

“Why did the sand blush?”

“Because the sea weed,” Annabeth says, and revels in Percy’s indignant expression. “I’ve heard that one before.”

“What? Where? That’s a limited-edition Percy goof-em-up!”

To be honest, she’s not sure: the answer sort of just slipped out. She frowns, trying to think back to where she could’ve heard it. Definitely not Thalia or Piper, they don’t make stupid jokes, and Bobby and Matthew are still in their _your mom_ phase. Then it hits her: the locker-mate. She smiles. Now that’s an interesting story. But for another time.

“Just around,” she says, but when she turns to Percy his brows are furrowed, as though he’s also deep in thought. He looks almost—anguished, for some reason, and she frowns at him. “Are you that insulted? We can run it again if you want.”

Percy shakes his head, like he’s just come out of his reverie. “Uh, no,” he says, “sorry, just—remembering something.”

“If it’s another bad joke I don’t want to hear it,” she warns, and he laughs. It’s a little thin, almost nervous-sounding, not properly reaching his eyes, but it sounds genuine enough, so she leaves it.

“You wish you had jokes this good.”

“Not even a little.”

“I don’t have to be psychic to know that’s a lie.”

She just rolls her eyes, and he laughs again, and this one sounds more real. Content, she smiles a little, closing her eyes, and tipping her head back in the moonlight. When she opens them again, she is staring straight up into the sky, which is uncharacteristically filled with stars. She thinks she can count on one hand the sky’s been so clear that she can see so many, like needlepoints against black velvet, and she properly leans back this time, lying parallel with the bars, one pressing in to each shoulder blade. “Look at the sky,” she says, and after a moment Percy lies down next to her. She can smell his shampoo, coconut, she thinks.

He lets out a low whistle. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Do you know much about stars?”

There’s a pause. “Not really.”

“I do.” This feels a little easier to admit, now that she’s not looking at him, instead staring up into infinity, at the stars millions and millions of light years away. “The universe used to really scare me. Still does, sometimes. Just knowing how big and vast and endless it is. The book I used to have, about physics, I used to read it obsessively. Cover-to-cover. I thought... if I knew everything about space, about stars and galaxies and planets and black holes, then I wouldn’t be so scared.”

Percy’s voice is almost a whisper. “Did it help?”

“No,” she confesses. “Now I’m just scared and know a lot about space.” She points. “See, that? That’s Leo.”

“I’m a Leo.”

She smiles, where he can’t see her. “It’s after a Greek myth. Where Hercules slayed the Nemean Lion.”

“I’m named after a Greek myth,” Percy says. “Perseus. The only hero who didn’t get a tragic ending.”

Something about his voice is a little off. She turns her head. “Yeah?”

Abruptly, he sits up, and puts his head in his hands. A little alarmed, Annabeth sits up as well, confusedly.

“Percy?” she says. “Are you okay?”

“I have to tell you something,” he says.

She wants to make a joke of it, but there is something serious in his expression that makes any potential quips die on her tongue. “Okay,” she says gently. “What’s up?”

Percy’s leg is bouncing. This is the first time it has read as agitation on him: usually it just comes across as excess energy, or frenetic excitement, but today it feels a little edgy, tinged with anxiety. Something is clearly wrong, and for the first time Annabeth feels something poisonous open in her stomach. “I—I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while, and—I wasn’t really planning on doing it tonight, but you kept saying all these really personal thing and it means so much that you trust me with that and I just—”

“Percy,” Annabeth cuts him off. He’s really beginning to freak her out now. “What is it?”

He expels a nervous breath, and then reaches into his pocket. Annabeth frowns, wondering what the hell he’s about to show her, until he produces a crumpled piece of notepaper, and wordlessly hands it to her. She frowns, and then glances up at him; he is chewing on his lower lip, eyes flickering, and she looks back down at the paper. She doesn’t get it, until she unfolds it, and sees her own handwriting.

_I think I’m falling in love with him, but I’m really, really afraid._

Something like ice pricks her bloodstream.

“Where did you get this?” she whispers. She doesn’t even recognise it as her own voice: it feels like it’s come from someone else. She doesn’t understand. She feels like she is processing in slow-motion.

Percy’s voice is wrung with nerves. “You gave it to me.”

She shakes her head. “No, I...” I gave it to my locker-mate. She counts two beats, feels them like broken glass, and then finally looks up at him. “I don’t understand.”

He gives her a wry smile. “Locker 167, right?”

167.

Oh, God.

She feels like she’s going to be sick.

All along, she had been so scared of Percy finding out all the ugly parts of her, the twisted, angry, bitter, jealous parts, the parts that hated her parents and couldn’t look after her family and only slept with the help of pills, the parts she had wanted to keep under wraps as long as possible, the parts of her she had spilt into her locker to an illusion of a boy. Except it’s not an illusion, the illusion is right here in front of her. How long had he known? She stares into his face, watches as it slowly turns to concern, and feels sick. Has it been from the beginning? Has he known all along? Or was it recently?

That doesn’t matter. What matters is that he let her tell him all her deepest darkest secrets and she was dumb enough to think that the universe would ever be kind enough to owe her anything.

Percy is watching her anxiously. “Say something?”

Annabeth is a lot of things. But the worst is a coward.

“I need to go,” she says.

“Annabeth—” Percy says urgently, but she’s climbing off the monkey bars before he can stop her and walking as fast as she can towards the gate. She realises belatedly that her hands are shaking so she tucks them into her armpits but that doesn’t help, because it’s not just her hands, it’s everything: her entire body is trembling. She feels her eyes prick, and she quickens her pace even more. She is not going to let him see her cry. He doesn’t get that satisfaction.

“Wait, Annabeth!” he calls after her, and there’s a thud like he just jumped down. The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, and then a hand on her arm: “Annabeth, please, just—”

She whirls around and his hand falls off. He stands there, eyes wide and damp and confused, and she hates him, she hates that seeing him cry still makes something twist inside her.

“Don’t Annabeth me,” she says, voice wavering, “don’t—you don’t get to _do_ that—”

“Please just listen to me,” he pleads, “I promise—”

“No!” One traitorous tear escapes, and she wipes at it furiously. She is angry, but the sort of anger that is wet, that wracks your entire body with sobs and makes you want to just scream until the clouds listen and split. “How long have you known, huh? Was it fun for you? Getting me to open up, tell you everything, while you played at liking me outside of the locker? _Huh_?”

“Annabeth, I swear—”

“I told you so much, about—about the divorce, about myself, my friends, and—and—”

“You have to know I meant every word I said,” he says frantically, “you have to know—”

“Did you think it would be funny? Was this some sort of joke on-set? Did Piper know?”

Percy is shaking her head before she’s even finished speaking. “No, Annabeth—”

“What?” she snaps at him. She thinks she is shouting. “What the hell can you possibly say to me?”

Percy stares at her helplessly. He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can suddenly there is a shout of, “Hey!” and a triangle of yellow light hits them both square in the face.

Annabeth instinctively turns towards the noise, holding her hand up to shield her eyes; distantly, she is aware of Percy doing the same thing, and something twists inside of her, that she is still so in tune to him that even when she hates him most she still can’t pull her eyes away from him.

There is a man approaching, in dark clothes, carrying a torch, with a suspicious look on his face. He is wearing a neon vest that says PARK RANGER, and suddenly Annabeth is very tired. He glances between the two of them, shining the torch in both of their faces.

“What are you two doing here?” the man says gruffly. “Park’s closed. Don’t you know what time it is?”

“We were just leaving,” Percy says.

“That’s what I thought.” The man still regards them warily, flicking the torch from Annabeth to Percy and back again. He shifts. “Is everything okay?”

Annabeth imagines what it looks like, both of them wide-eyed and pale, angry and tearful and so, so confused. She thinks she’d like to know the answer to that, too. “Yeah,” she says stonily. “Everything’s fine.”

In her peripheral, she sees Percy flinch, and she clenches her fist. Clearly unconvinced, the man flicks his torch to Percy, as if trying to read the truth from his expression. There is a long beat.

Then: “Say,” he says, “aren’t you that kid from that web drama?”

“No,” Percy says. “Generic face, I guess.”

“Could’ve sworn you were. Must be the hair.” Satisfied, he switches off the torch, and then points at them. “I’ll let you go – but next time I catch you traipsing around these parts this late it’ll be a fine for both of you, you hear me?”

Mutely, they nod.

“Good,” the man says. “Well, good night, then, kids. Boy, you better take your girl home, she looks as spooked as a horse.”

Annabeth feels her nails bite into her palm, and just silently nods, watches as the man bobs his head at them, and then turns on his heel, lumbering away across the grass. It suddenly feels so much darker now that the torch isn’t on. She turns to Percy, who is giving her a helpless look.

“I’m going to go home,” she says quietly.

“Can I walk you?”

“No. That’s okay.”

He nods, barely. She can’t look at him, or she thinks she might start crying again, so she just swallows, and then turns to go. Just as she’s taken a few steps, and her eyes have filled with tears, he calls, “Annabeth?”

She hates herself for it, but she pauses, and turns.

He looks so, so tired. “Can I call you? When you get home? To explain?”

She knows if she let him, she would forgive him, because even now, she feels like there is little she wouldn’t do for him. But won’t let herself. “No,” she says. “Please don’t.”

He looks like he wants to say something, but he bites his tongue, and just nods. “Okay,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

She waits, a few more moments, silently hoping he is going to say anything more, put up more of a fight. Tell her that it’s all a misunderstanding, he found the note on the floor and recognised the handwriting, that the night has only just begun, that he has a picnic set up on the other side of the park with hot chocolate and sandwiches and he was going to kiss under the stars and she was going to warm down to her toes.

But he doesn’t, so she just nods, and turns away. Only once she knows she’s out of earshot does she let the tears fall.

*

She doesn’t get out of bed.

It’s an extended weekend so it’s not like she doesn’t have time, but she almost wishes it wasn’t, just to regain some sense of normalcy. She just wants to get up and go back to usual, go to school, come home, rinse, repeat, but now an extra day of nothing that would have once been exciting is just a grey haze. As soon as she gets home from the park, she has a shower, and then another, and then climbs into bed and curls her knees to her chest and just stares blankly at the wall.

She doesn’t know what to feel. She feels numb. The fact that Percy has known all these intensely private things about her, things she hasn’t even told Thalia or Piper, for all this time, makes her want to throw up. She feels strangely violated, like someone just broke into her diary and read out all her deepest, most private thoughts and feelings.

What’s worse, is that underneath it all, she just feels embarrassed. Sure, he lied, but she was the one who was stupid enough to trust the stranger in her locker. She’s just lucky her notes didn’t end up posted on the school Instagram, or whatever. Though there’s always time, she thinks, a little darkly. She doesn’t think Percy would be the kind to do that, but then again, she also didn’t think he was the kind of person to lie to her and let her make a fool out of herself, confessing to his face that she thought she might be in love with him.

It makes her cringe even thinking about it, and she rolls over, burying her head under her pillow. She doesn’t want to think. She just wants to shut off from the world and fall asleep.

She drifts, in and out. Never deeply, only in the half-state between awake and dreaming: but her room has been dark since she first came in, she closed all the blinds and kept the light off, so sometimes there are long moments where she’s not sure if she’s asleep. Whatever it is, she just keeps replaying the events of the night over and over in her head.

God, she’s such an idiot. She feels her eyes swim with tears, and makes a frustrated sound, muffling them into her pillow. She hates him, and she _hates_ him, and she also hates the fact that she doesn’t really hate him at all.

At some point Frederick pokes his head in, cautiously. He asks if she wants a cup of tea, or for him to bring up any food, which will probably just be cereal, or ramen, which is the extent of his culinary skills, but she declines. Still, when she emerges next from out under her blankets, there’s a mug on her bedside table. Green, and the teabag has split, tea leaves swimming in it, but it’s so thoughtful that she feels her eyes fill with tears again. She drinks it all, anyway, even though it’s cold and she doesn’t like green tea, and tehn burrows herself back into her mattress and just feels sorry for herself.

Saturday bleeds into Sunday which bleeds into Monday, and Annabeth for the first time gets out of bed to make some toast and have a shower. The shower is scalding and she comes out feeling scrubbed raw, and she only manages to nibble at a piece of toast, but it’s something, she supposes. Frederick gives her an awkward, pleased smile from the kitchen table when she skulks in to put her empty mug away, and she returns it, before retreating back to her room.

She is content to just nap the rest of the day away in a similar fashion to the previous weekend, but just as she feels herself drifting back off, there is a bang, and the sound of voices, and when she pokes an eye out of her nest of blankets, she sees none other than Thalia and Piper climbing through her bedroom window, cursing and swearing at each other, laden with shopping bags.

“Thalia? Piper?” Her voice is croaky from not having used it in days, and she swallows, clears her throat, and sits up. Thalia, halfway through pulling Piper through the window, turns to her at the sound of her speaking, and shoots her a small smile. “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t answering your texts,” Thalia says, and gives Piper a particularly hard tug that has her clattering to the floor. “Jeez, could you be any less graceful?”

“I think you broke one of my ribs,” Piper wheezes, clutching at her stomach.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Thalia says, “they’re probably bruised at worse.” She looks at Annabeth. “Come on, no school! We needed to hang out.”

Annabeth watches as they unpack the plastic bags: movies, candy, and a frankly worrying amount of alcohol. “You didn’t need to come,” she says in a small voice.

“Uh, yes we did,” Piper says. She picks herself up off the floor and comes over to where Annabeth is lying in bed, perching on the mattress next to her, and running a hand through her hair. It’s probably a little greasy and flat, but she doesn’t betray a thing, just gives her a soft smile. “The last time we had time off school Thalia’s dad swooped in and ruined the day. Obviously we were going to do this time right.”

“What are friends for?” Thalia says, which would be sweet was she not kicking off her big black boots at the same time and getting mud all over her floor. “Come on, let’s watch some movies and eat ungodly amounts of candy. I am armed with enough beer to probably kill a man so I’m ready.”

Annabeth feels a half-hearted smile tug at her lips as she watches them clamber gracelessly onto the bed with her, snuggling up either side and pooling the food in between them. A lot of mint chocolate, Annabeth’s favourite, which she knows for a fact Thalia despises, always claims it tastes of toothpaste. There’s also a Ziploc bag of jolly ranchers, and she almost wants to cry just looking at them.

Almost. She’s not pathetic.

Piper snags Annabeth’s laptop from her dresser and slides in one of the DVDs as Thalia cracks open a beer and accidentally spills some on her duvet. Annabeth isn’t sure what movie it is, and she has a suspicion that they don’t either: she’s pretty sure it’s just a smokescreen for the real reason they’re here. Sure enough, after five minutes, she feels Piper next to her shift a little.

“So,” she says, carefully, “is there a reason you dropped off the face of the earth for the last few days?”

Annabeth shrugs, bringing her comforter up to her ears. “Yeah. I guess.”

There is a beat. “That was your cue to tell us what it is,” Piper says.

Annabeth sighs, and pauses the movie. The girls recalibrate around her, so they’re sat cross-legged, facing her, Thalia sucking on the end of a gummy-worm the length of a large snake. It would have been comical, were it any other situation.

Annabeth swallows. “You know... my locker-mate?”

They both nod.

“It’s Percy.”

There is a very, very long silence. Annabeth risks glancing up at them, to see them both looking staring at her confusedly. Thalia’s mouth is open, showing the streaks of artificial blue colouring on her tongue.

Ananbeth feels a little defensive. “What?”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Piper says.

“Why would it be a good thing?” Thalia says to her. “He ruined her notes.”

“Yeah, but he rewrote them after.”

“He _did_?”

“Of course it’s not a good thing,” Annabeth says, a little stung. “It’s—a violation of trust.”

“A what?” If anything, Piper looks even more confused. Annabeth feels strangely betrayed. She’s sure of everyone, they’d be the most understanding. She wasn’t asking for much, even some faux-sympathy would’ve been nice. “Annabeth, what are you on about? Is this why you’ve been holed up in your room for days? Because Percy’s your locker-mate? I’m failing to see the correlation.”

“Because!” Annabeth flounders a little, frustrated. “Because, I—I told him things, the locker-mate, things about—me, and my family, things about Percy, and—all along, it was him! He just let me make an idiot of myself.”

“Things like what?” Thalia says.

Annabeth picks at her comforter. “Just... things. Like... about the situation, with Percy. How I felt like I was f—how I really liked him. And he was just—encouraging it. Just—” She doesn’t know how to convince them, so she reaches over to her desk drawer and wrenches it open, pulling out the stack of notes she’s been keeping, tied together with a rubber band. She hadn’t realised just how tall it was, and how this was only half, his half, and something in her wrenches at the sight of it. She can’t look at it for too long, so she just drops it in the middle of them and tucks her hands under her thighs to stop them from shaking. “I mean, look. We talked a lot. To know that—to know that he knew all along cheapens it, you know?”

“Holy _shit_ ,” Thalia says, with a low whistle, as she flicks through them. “I don’t think you’ve said this many words to me, ever.”

Annabeth watches them anxiously as they flick through them. Something almost feral inside her convulses a little as she watches Piper carefully slide off the rubber band and have a peer through all the notes, how they’re looking and reading all Percy’s private notes, but then she remembers how he knew all along, and feels less guilty. She sets her jaw.

“Jeez,” Piper says, as she touches one. “I had no idea about any of this.”

Annabeth glances at it: that’s the note in which he told her about Gabe. Instinctively, she reaches for it, and folds it. She may hate Percy, but this was something private.

“Did he say how long he knew?” Thalia says.

Annabeth shrugs. “Not really.”

“Didn’t you ask him?”

“We haven’t really spoken since.”

“Why not?”

Annabeth stares at her. “Why not? I don’t want to speak to him. I told him not to call me.”

“Annabeth!” Piper says, dismayed.

“ _What_?”

“He could’ve always sent you a note,” Thalia says, and Annabeth gives her a look. “Too soon?”

“Why did you say that?” Piper says. “You’re telling me you didn’t even hear him out?”

“What’s there to hear out? He let me make an idiot of myself. I trusted him, and he betrayed me. I have nothing to say to him.”

Piper and Thalia exchange a look Annabeth doesn’t like very much. She feels herself bristle.

“What?”

“And you say I’m a drama queen,” Piper says.

“I’m not being a drama queen.”

“Yes, you absolutely are.” Annabeth opens her mouth indignantly to retort but Piper cuts her off. “No, listen to me. Okay, so did Percy mess up? Yes, definitely. He should’ve told you as soon as he found out, and yeah, it sucks that you feel like you told him all this private stuff that you wouldn’t have if you knew who he was. I get it. But you’re also being sort of a dick for not hearing him out. He could have a genuine reason for not telling you sooner. Besides” – she gestures to the note Annabeth’s holding, which she hadn’t realised she was clutching defensively to her chest – “it’s not like you were the only one who shared personal stuff. I mean, jeez, I’d say me and Percy are pretty close and he hasn’t even let up a single thing about any of this. You’re embarrassed, I get it – but so’s he, probably. You just need to _talk_ to each other.”

Annabeth swallows, and glances down at the note, feeling her hands relax around it. She traces the thumbprints either side of it, fits her own thumb in it. Imagines all the time she’s had that thumbprint pressed to her pulse, in the way he does when they hold hands.

“But it’s not just that,” she admits, in a voice no louder than a whisper.

“What is it, then?”

Annabeth picks hard at the comforter. She can’t look at either of them. “I know—I know I haven’t been—super open, about stuff going on with me, and stuff. And I’m really sorry. I don’t mean for you to feel like—like I don’t value you, or anything, because I do, so much, and that’s why I’ve never said anything, because—” And oh God, she feels her eyes begin to fill with tears again. She could probably fill an ocean with the amount she’s cried in the past few days. “Because I didn’t want anything to change, when you found out.”

“Oh—Beth—” And then there are arms reaching out for her, and Annabeth lets out a wet laugh that could also be a sob as she feels them tuck themselves around her. Thalia’s pointy chin digs into her shoulder and Piper’s long hair tickles her face, and she’s aware that one of them is stroking her hair like she’s a child. “Beth,” one of them says, and that’s Thalia, who is never inclined to participate in anything even remotely emotional (Annabeth doesn’t the beers are playing a fair part), “why would anything change?”

“I don’t know,” she says hoarsely, throat thick, “I just didn’t want you to treat me any different. And it’s just—I’m so pathetic, too, like none of what I’ve got going on is even that bad, not compared to you—”

“Oh, please don’t use me a benchmark of bad luck,” Thalia says. “I long since stopped caring about anything.”

“What’s this got to do with Percy?” Piper says gently.

Annabeth sniffs. “I don’t know. I guess—I was scared, once he found out all this stuff about me, things would change between us, you know? I didn’t want anything to change, I didn’t want him to treat me like I was—anything different. I wanted to tell him in my own time, of my own accord, but that was taken from me because—because he knew all along.” She sniffs again, and wipes her nose on her sleeve. “It’s stupid, I know, I just—I don’t know. When I found out that it was him, I sort of tunnel-visioned, and panicked.”

Piper strokes her hair reassuringly. “It’s not stupid.”

“It’s a little stupid,” Thalia says.

Piper glares at her. “Thalia!”

“Hey, I’m all about validating feelings, and Annabeth, I get it, honestly. But also—isn’t this a good thing? I mean, he knows. And he’s still treating you the same.”

Annabeth’s never thought about it that way before. She scrubs at her cheek. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re worried that you’re gonna scare him off with all your garbage, aren’t you? But clearly he wasn’t that scared off because he was still hanging with you and acting the same until he came clean. Like, obviously it sucks that you didn’t get to do it in your own time, but doesn’t that sort of count for something?”

Oh.

“Wow, Thalia,” Piper says, “did you actually give good advice for once?”

“Alcohol unlocks my third eye,” Thalia says. “I can probably predict the future. Ask me something.”

“What are next week’s lottery numbers?”

As Thalia starts rattling off a string of numbers, Annabeth’s mind whirs. She’d never even thought of it like that before: that Percy had known all along, but also he’d known all along. She doesn’t know when he found out: maybe it was the very first time they met, or maybe it was somewhere along the line, but what she does know is that he never treated her as anything other than herself. He never acted like she was breakable or vulnerable, never did anything but show her endless kindnesses even when she didn’t deserve them.

She still feels flayed open, knowing that all her secrets are out in the open, that he knows every single one of them, even the ones she’d planned on never telling anyone, not even him. It is like every bit of her has been rubbed raw, but for the first time, she feels herself begin to heal a little, grow a new skin.

It sucks. But maybe it was for the best.

For the first time in days, she lets herself hope.

*

The bell rings at 6:59 precisely.

Annabeth has been trying not to watch the clock, has tried every trick in the book to keep herself distracted – cleaning, schoolwork, movies, reading – but admittedly, she has been counting down the minutes, feeling herself coil tighter and tighter with each second that passes. They’d agreed on 7, and the fact that Percy is being so careful he arrived almost on the dot simultaneously warms and twists something inside her. She hopes he is always this endearingly punctual; that it’s not because he feels as though he is treading on thin ice.

She has so many things she wants to say to him.

She opens the door, and there he is, in the flesh, for the first time in just over a week, in a jacket and jeans, nose flushed from the chill. She aches just looking at him, at his earnest green eyes and his hair that she knows for a fact is as soft as it looks, and she so badly wants to touch, but she doesn’t, just twists her hand into her sweater.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” she says back. At that moment, her watch beeps, signifying the new hour, and they both jump a little. “Sorry, just—my watch.”

“Oh,” he says. “Okay. Sorry I was—early, then.”

“By ten seconds.”

He shrugs.

She doesn’t really know what to say to that, so she steps back to let him in.

He is very careful with how he moves, like he’s thinks he’s imposing, which is so unlike the Percy she’s gotten to know that something sort of twists in her chest. He takes off his jacket and then sort of pauses with it halfway down his arms, like he isn’t sure where to put it, so Annabeth takes it from him and hangs it on the banister. “Should I—” he says, and when she turns he’s got half a sneaker off.

“You can keep them on,” she says, “if you want.”

“Oh,” he says, and takes them off anyway. God, it’s so awkward. She can’t look him in the eyes; evidently, he can’t either, with how focused he is on taking his shoes off. He bends down a little to tuck them against the wall and spends an extra few seconds straightening them, absurdly, like that matters, like she’ll get mad if they’re not exactly parallel to the moulding. Then he straightens and inanely she realises that they are both in socks, and hers has a hole in the heel where it’s been worn down from overuse, and then they’re looking at each other and she can see the tension, palpably, in the air between them. His fingers keep moving, tapping against his thighs, and she has to stop herself from looking at them so she says, “Do you want anything to drink?”

“No, that’s okay.”

A pause. They’ve never been this awkward around each other. Annabeth isn’t sure whose fault it is.

“Do you want to come upstairs?” she says.

It’s not until she’s halfway up the stairs and starts seeing lint in the carpet and the stains on the wallpaper that she realises she can’t remember the last time she’s had a friend over. Piper and Thalia have come before, of course, but as she wracks her brain she realises that it’s been a long time: definitely not recently. Percy’s one of the first people she’s had over in a long while, and she’s suddenly so conscious of the disorder of the house, how long it’s been since any of them picked up a hoover, or sponge. She kicks a stray cleat off the landing and hurriedly closes the door to the bathroom when she realises that it’s also an utter disaster from the twins getting ready for school that morning, toothpaste still in the sink and clothes on the floor.

“Sorry about the mess,” she mutters, embarrassed. “I didn’t realise it was this bad.”

“No, it’s okay,” Percy says. “Sort of nice.”

She gives him an incredulous look. “Nice.”

“Yeah, lived-in. You know.”

Out of all the adjectives she can think of, _lived-in_ would the last she’d use to describe the house, but it’s a nice enough compliment, so she just leaves it.

She shows Percy into her room, and he pauses in the very middle of it, like he’s taking everything in. Seeing him standing surrounded by all her things feels disarming; for so long she’d been so careful to keep him separated from her real life, like he was a doorway into a nicer, sunnier land, removed from reality, that having him now, in her room, feels like the strangest of contradictions. It humanises him, too: paints him in finer clarity, like for the first time she is seeing him for every rough edge he has.

It’s a little sad, but also not. Because human Percy is just as beautiful, if not more so.

“I like your room,” he says, into the silence, and it’s such a Percy thing to say that she can’t help the snort that escapes her. “What?”

“I like your room? Really?”

“I don’t know,” he says, “I don’t really know what to say.”

Right. So they’re doing this now. Annabeth twists her fingers hard, fits her thumbnail in the scar, presses hard. “Do you want to sit down?” she says, quietly.

“On the bed?”

“If you want.”

“Oh. Okay.” Percy does, hesitantly, picks at the knee of his jeans. She’s never seen him look like this: awkward and vulnerable and unsmiling. She sits down next to him, keeping a careful space between them; when they look up, they instinctively turn to each other, and their knees are but a finger space apart. If she reached forward, she could fit the breadth of her hand in it, feel the press of their legs either side of her hand: but she doesn’t, just tucks it between her hands.

For a long, long moment, they sit there in silence. and then Percy says, quietly, “Annabeth, I’m so sorry.”

She looks up. He isn’t looking at her, instead he is keeping his eyes firmly on his comforter, picking at a loose thread on his jeans.

“I didn’t—I never meant to hurt you,” he says. “You have to know that.” He looks up, then. “I promise. I wasn’t—it was real, to me. All of it. It was never a prank.”

His expression is nothing but painfully earnest. “When did you find out?”

“When you came over to Piper’s, and she was video-calling me. You—” He swallows, audibly. “You talked about me. Or, the locker-mate. And I just—I realised that it was you, and—I panicked. I should have told you then.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly, “you should’ve.”

“I just—” He sighs, frustratedly. “I didn’t want to lose you. What we had.”

This is a little surprising. “Why would that change?”

He gestures around him. “Look at us, Annabeth. We can’t even look at each other. You’re telling me if I told you straight up you wouldn’t have reacted badly?”

She bites her tongue at that, because he has a point. Annabeth is a lot of things but she thinks the worst one is a coward.

“Sorry,” he says, “I shouldn’t have—said that.”

“No, it’s okay,” she says, strangely calm, because she thinks that it is, and he glances at her. “It’s not... not true.”

His eyes flicker. She swallows, rubs her palms up and down her thighs.

“I... don’t like talking about myself,” she says. She sort of feels like she is picking her own flesh off her bones and handing it to him and she can’t look at him in the eyes, so she looks down at her hands instead, at the chipping nail polish, the nail mark from all those months ago. “About—things going on in my life. I always feel like I’m just complaining and I— _hate_ being weak. I know if I told people – if I told Thalia and Piper, about what’s going on, they’d treat me differently, and I just—” She swallows. “I have such a good thing with them, you know? I am so lucky that I have them. And I just couldn’t bear it if that changed because of me.

“They know a bit. They know my parents aren’t—together. Piper knows they’re divorced, and Thalia does too, probably. And they probably suspect a bit more, about me not sleeping, and stuff. But that’s sort of it. I—I didn’t tell anyone. And then you.”

“And then me,” Percy echoes, quietly.

She picks hard at the seam of her jeans. She doesn’t look at him. “I think—not knowing who you were sort of made it easier, to tell you things. Because we didn’t know each other, so—you couldn’t treat me any differently. And I wanted to hate you so badly, because you were so annoying, and you got crumbs in my locker and you spilled grape juice on my notes but then you rewrote them and—” She stops abruptly with a sharp exhale, and puts her hands over her eyes. “The notes sort of kept me together,” she confesses, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “Having them—having you, it – sort of became my outlet. And after a while I think I stopped seeing you as a person, and started treating you like a diary. And that wasn’t fair of me.”

“But I was the same,” Percy says, “I told you things too, it wasn’t—”

“No, I know, I know.” She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, hard. “No, I know, I just... When you told me, that it was you—I just got really, really scared.”

She risks dropping her hands and glancing at him. He looks a little confused, eyes flickering. “Scared?”

“You just—” She sighs, frustratedly. “You knew all these things about me. For the first time I realised that—that all the stuff I’d been writing down, they were going to someone, to you, and you were standing in front of me and you knew everything, you knew every single ugly piece of me, and I just—I just panicked.”

Percy watches her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t hear you out,” she says quietly. “You didn’t—you didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry I reacted like that. I just got really scared. I felt like I’d just been cornered.”

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” Percy says.

“I know. And I didn’t realise that then, but—but I had time to think about it, properly, and I guess I put some things into perspective.” Half-heartedly: “Perspective changes a lot of things, I guess.”

Percy’s lips twitch. “Yeah.”

“I know you would never do anything to purposely hurt me. I know that. You are one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.” She exhales, picks at her jeans. “I guess that’s maybe also a part of it? I just—I don’t know. Felt sort of insecure, around you.”

“ _Insecure_?”

She can’t look at him. “You are so—beautiful, Percy. It’s taken a while for me to even think I could be good enough for you.”

There is a beat. When she risks a glance up at him, he looks thoughtful, but sadly so.

“Is that what you meant?” he says softly. “In your note? When you said... you said that you were worried I was good and you... weren’t?”

She nods, mutely.

He frowns, and licks his lips. “But... you know that I’m... not, though, right?”

“Not what?”

“Not that good. I meant what I said. No one is that good.”

“You are,” she says, but he’s shaking his head.

“No, I’m not. I—” He breaks off, frustrated. “I told you, about—about Gabe? And how I sort of had issues with anger management? Things sucked, for a while, after him. I was sort of a nightmare. I didn’t know to process what had happened and sometimes I’d just so overwhelmed that I’d just—lash out. I lashed out at my mom, Annabeth, who is the best person in the whole world. And even now—even now, sometime, there are moments where I feel so angry, and I don’t know how to deal with it. It’s why—it’s why I’m still in counselling, you know? I’m not—I’m not that good, Annabeth. And I’m—I’m scared that you only like the idea of me. I’ve got ugly parts too, you know? You think when I found out who you were I didn’t also freak out? The fact that the girl I liked knew all these deep terrible things about me was— _terrifying_. But then you told me all that stuff about—about your parents, and your fears, and how you don’t sleep, and I thought—okay, so we’re both not super well put-together, but you wouldn’t judge me for that.”

Annabeth’s throat feels thick. “That’s not why I think you’re so good.”

“Then why?”

“Because—because you let yourself be happy. Because you make dumb jokes and buy me coffee even after I’ve turned you down and you’ve got the most beautiful laugh ever and—it has nothing to do with you, or Gabe, or whatever.”

“Then why would you think any of that stuff mattered to me?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You are—you are like nothing I’ve ever met before. I meant it, when I said I wanted to get to know you. And I’m sorry for lying. I just—I had you, and I didn’t want to let you go.”

Her heart hammers in her chest. She picks at the seam of her jeans and then looks up at him, meets his eyes. “And what about now?”

“What about now?”

“What happens to us now?”

Percy swallows, audibly, before shrugging, a small smile playing at his lips. “I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you meant to be psychic?”

“Not this time.”

His eyes are imploring, and so, so patient. He is so lovely: and maybe, she can be, if she lets herself. “I’d like if we... picked up where we left off. Before I freaked out.”

“In a cold park?”

Be brave. “With you taking me on a date.”

Percy’s eyebrows lift, and his lips curl into a smile. “You’d want that?”

“You’re really special to me,” she confesses. “I don’t—want to let that go, just yet. If that’s okay with you.”

“Do you even have to _ask_?”

She manages a laugh, because she can’t believe it. By Percy’s grin, he can’t either.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. One hundred times yes.”

She smiles back breathlessly at him. She’s sure her smile matches the size of his. She has never seen something so beautiful.

They don’t leave her room for the rest of the evening. There will be a time that they talk, she knows, talk about everything properly, about Smelly Gabe, about her parents, about her fears, and his too, about everything, but for now they curl on her bed and put a movie on her laptop and talk quietly over it, and then when the movie finishes, they let it autoplay to the next movie Netflix recommends because they can’t stop talking. At some point past eleven Percy nods off against her shoulder, and Annabeth watches him: she is tired, too, but she knows sleep won’t come, so she reaches for her headphones and plugs them in and puts on another movie. She’ll be here when he wakes up, just like last time.

At twelve past midnight, her phone on her dresser buzzes. She reaches for it.

 **Piper** : _can you believe another raccoon went for my shoes tonight, I honestly think they’re out to get me_

Annabeth smiles.

 **Annabeth** : _racconspiracy_

 **Piper** : _SHE SPEAKS_

 **Piper** : _also -3/10 pun usage, that was weak_

 **Piper** : _how are things with percy? did you manage to talk things out? is everything good?_

Annabeth glances down at Percy asleep on her shoulder, drooling. She doesn’t think she’s been this happy in a long time.

 **Annabeth** : _everything is good_.


End file.
